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Unfulfilled promise makes it easy to say no to 'Yes'

The classy, swan-like Joan Allen is always worth watching, even if she occasionally gets herself caught in a hopelessly pretentious love story with political overtones like Yes, the latest arty experiment from writer-director Sally Potter.

Sony Pictures Classics 'Yes' D+ The verdict: Arty, pretentious politically tinged love story, in iambic pentameter.tale. Director: Sally Potter Starring: Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian, Sam Neill, Shirley Henderson, Sheila Hancock Run time: 100 minutes Release date: June 24, 2005 Rating: R for language and some sexual content. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate "Yes"   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Written in verse — iambic pentameter, no less — that is bound to give most moviegoers pause, at least Allen (The Upside of Anger, Off the Map), Sam Neill as her British diplomat husband and Simon Abkarian as her Lebanese refugee lover are adept enough to make the dialogue sound vaguely natural.

The problem instead is the shallow content of those words, which want to explore the West's view of the Arab world in the aftermath of 9/11. A reasonable goal, but it soon becomes a self-conscious debate with the actors as the director's mouthpieces, two-dimensional stick figures with such names as "He" and "She." Potter has a keen visual sense that makes Yes attractive to look at, but the film has higher ambitions that remain unfulfilled.

Allen, so often cast as icy and emotionally distant, is a steamy, sexual being here who does not take much coaxing to slip into an affair with He, who left his homeland for London, where he is underemployed as a restaurant cook.

With an upstairs-downstairs touch, the film cuts frequently to a gregarious cleaning woman (Shirley Henderson) for the working-class perspective.

As if all of this were not arch enough, it somehow ends up in Cuba, held up as a model society without any of the prejudices against swarthy Middle Easterners found elsewhere.

Say Yes at your own peril.