Nadav Lapid’s Romp Through Post-October 7th Israel

Israeli auteur Nadav Lapid has never shied away from the violence of his homeland, directing a handful of dramas — Policeman, The Kindergarten Teacher, Synonyms and Ahed’s Knee — where characters face explosive situations both externally and within, pursued by a relentless camera targeting their every move. His movies are deeply political, but also poetic and personal, eschewing traditional storytelling for an expressionistic approach marked by bravura stylistics, inner turmoil and the occasional musical number.

If Ahed’s Knee, which came out in 2021, was already a furious cri de coeur against the powers-that-be in Israel, the director’s latest feature, Yes! (Ken!), takes that premise to the next level. Focusing on a young couple, Y. (Ariel Bronz) and Yasmin (Erfat Dor), who sell their bodies and souls to the highest bidders, the film is deliberately in-your-face and outrageously decadent, assaulting the senses as it blatantly depicts acts of physical and psychological self-destruction.

Lapid began writing Yes! before the October 7th massacre and subsequent war in Gaza, but the conflict clearly marks the movie from start to finish. Not only does Y., a jazz pianist, hype man and gigolo, agree to compose a new patriotic hymn to accompany the IDF’s massive — and still ongoing — attack on Palestinian territory, but certain scenes in the movie were shot with Gaza burning in the background. And while the director does acknowledge the war crimes committed by Hamas, his view of his own country is categorically bleak and condemning: In a regime ruled by violence, zealotry, and tons of money, you can either say yes and survive, or decide to leave such a place behind.

It’s baffling to see the Israeli Film Fund listed as one of the movie’s financers, because Yes! is not a work that makes you want to visit the place, unless you’re a rich cokehead. That description fits the people that Y. and Yasmine subject themselves to during an unsparing first hour filled with hedonistic blowouts and high-priced threesomes, all of them set to thumping techno that will blast your brains out. Both Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty and Boccaccio’s The Decameron come to mind as we watch the couple contort their athletic bodies, drown themselves in alcohol and give an older woman what looks like an orgasm in her ear, while they do everything they can to please their wealthy clientele.

Lapid goes overboard to make these scenes intolerable, with Shaï Goldman’s camera gyrating around like a drunken dancer on the verge of throwing up and production designer Pascale Consigny making sure to put Israeli flags in the background of nearly every location. And yet as much as these moments can be exhausting to sit through, both Y. and Yasmine appear, or at least pretend, to be having a great time, partying hard at night then waking up in a modest Tel Aviv flat to care for their adorable baby boy.

They seem to be decent people — young, beautiful and in love, trying to make it in a country that has gone mad. Yasmine is a hip-hop dance teacher, while Y. is a talented musician in need of a big break. When he accepts to write a Zionist ballad paid for by a fanatic Russian oligarch (Alexey Serebryakov), he sells his soul to the devil and barely survives.

Toward the end of the movie, we finally get to see a video of that song, and it’s an actual clip taken from a propaganda film supporting the IDF, with a chorus of children singing lyrics that praise their nation’s military might against the Palestinian enemy. Earlier on, Y. wanders through a delirious street celebration for Israel’s Independence Day, passing by hordes of screaming men waving flags and dancing wildly to more thumping techno.

Yes! may be purposely over-the-top and unsettling to watch — at two and a half hours, it won’t win over audiences looking for light arthouse fare — but Lapid is trying to show us that it’s hardly an exaggeration of the truth, or at least his own truth about his homeland. He’s made an aggressive movie about what he believes to be an aggressive nation, focusing on two Israelis who are searching for either success or an exit plan.

Divided into three chapters, the film eveventually tones down in a lengthy middle section, entitled “The Route,” during which the couple splits apart and Y. heads out of town to work on his song. He crosses paths with Leah (Naama Preis), an old love interest from music school who’s now working as an interpreter. The two drive around the desert and make their way toward the Gaza border, leading to a sequence — shot in a single take — that has Leah reciting details of the October 7th atrocities that she translated on behalf of the victims. Later, they venture onto a hillside overlooking Gaza City, which is covered in smoke and resonates with the sound of gunfire and bombings.

For all the crazy bacchanalia we witness in Yes! (a friend referred to the movie as “120 Days of Shalom”), Lapid doesn’t shy away from the suffering of his fellow Israelis, nor to what has happened in the massacre’s aftermath. But if the director was already critical of his country beforehand, the place is in such a dire state right now that his only response this time seems to be a form of cinematic self-flagellation. His new movie offers little solace for those hoping the Holy Land will find peace again, and as an exile who’s already lived in France for many years, he seems to be turning his back on Israel with an emphatic “No!”