Yes
dir. Sally Potter
Opens Fri July 15.

Give this to writer/director Sally Potter: No matter what your thoughts on her films (Orlando, The Tango Lesson), she never, ever does anything halfway. True to form, Yes, her visually intricate look at post 9/11 romantic philandering, is awesomely pretentious—but, ultimately, in a rather good way.

Feeling stymied by her philandering politician husband (Sam Neill, a marvelously bland monster as always), an Irish-American scientist known only as "She" begins an affair with a Lebanese surgeon ("He," AKA actor Simon Abkarian), who has been exiled to London and forced to work as a line chef after the War on Terror. Meanwhile, a nosy housekeeper (the incomparably dipsy-do Scottish actress Shirley Henderson) ruminates endlessly on the everlasting presence of dirt. Oh, and the entire thing is rendered in rhyming, hiphoppy iambic slang, somewhere between Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss. Throw in numerous blatant digs at the heroine's privileged lifestyle via some overly chatty impoverished extras, and you've got what initially seems like topnotch SCTV fodder. Yet, somehow, it all feels of a piece, anchored by Joan Allen's tremendous performance as an eminently sensible woman whose emotions are finally reaching boil. Long an actress notable for her cool reserve (not for nothing was she cast as Pat Nixon), Allen has lately taken roles allowing her to show off a fiercer, sensual side. Here, she makes the most of it, particularly in a climatic parking garage confrontation, where she brings a mounting venom to her rhymes that Eminem would envy. At the risk of venturing into Gene Shalit territory, there's a true upside to her character's anger.

Make no mistake: Potter's high-minded, demanding, hermetically sealed style will likely infuriate as many as it entrances. (While talking with Allen during her recent stop in Seattle, she good-naturedly conceded that, while extremely proud of the film, she's personally witnessed more than her share of walkouts.) Still, the filmmaker's boundless ambition and refusal to tone down her passions one iota comes off as genuinely admirable, especially in this day and age. Better to reach for the stars, and all that. ANDREW WRIGHT

Happy Endings
dir. Don Roos
Opens Fri July 15.

There are no surprises in Happy Endings. It is neither great nor bad, and as such satisfies an expectation that is neither high nor low. Don Roos's third feature (like his first feature, The Opposite of Sex) is simply a pleasant sex comedy. The photography is seductive, and the score drifts over the movie's storylines—four in all—like a dreamy vapor.

Story #1 focuses on a gay restaurateur (Steve Coogan), #2 the sexual awakening of a young homosexual (Jason Ritter), #3 a young woman (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who uses sex to climb up the social ladder, and #4 a woman's (Lisa Kudrow) midlife crisis. Each little story forms a world that is self-contained and casually connected to the other worlds. Some worlds are more interesting than others, and as a whole we get the picture of a small society, along with the forces that make each world rotate around a rich man (Tom Arnold), who is the father of the young homosexual as well as the subject of Gyllenhaal's material ambitions.

If Arnold is the sun of the movie, though, Lisa Kudrow is its Jupiter. She plays a woman whose stable life is thrown into chaos when a young man (Jesse Bradford) appears out of nowhere and claims to be the son she gave up for adoption many years ago. The results of this story are not amazing, but Kudrow is always wonderful to watch; now in her early 40s, she has a fading beauty that captures a general disappointment with life, and yet retains a sense that this is the best of all possible worlds. Like the inscription on the ring that King Solomon wore, her face, her presence, is one that makes you happy when you are sad and sad when you are happy. CHARLES MUDEDE

The Beautiful Country
dir. Hans Petter Moland
Opens Fri July 15.

There are actually two beautiful countries in this quiet film: Vietnam and America. The former is where Binh (the pitch-perfect Damien Nguyen), half-Vietnamese and half-American, has grown up ostracized by his community; thought of as not really Vietnamese, he's referred to as "less than dust." The latter is where he treks in search of his lost GI father.

In Vietnam, Binh's life is miserable—manual labor, complete disrespect, no apparent exit—and the misery is only compounded once he leaves the sticks and tracks down his mother in Saigon, where he finds her working as a servant for a wealthy couple. Any happiness found in the reunion is quickly extinguished, however, as shortly after Binh's arrival, things go awry and he's forced to flee the country with his young half-brother, Tam (Tran Dang Quoc Thinh) in tow. The journey to America isn't pretty—Binh, along with a Chinese prostitute named Ling (Bai Ling), makes the trip by boat, locked in swaying squalor with other unfortunate souls. And once he arrives, things don't get much better, as Binh finds America not just confusing, but relentless. Living not even a notch above his former status, whatever meaning his homeland provided his life has now been decimated by big-city chaos. He is a nobody—and he still has to track down his father.

Gorgeously photographed, patiently directed by Norwegian Hans Petter Moland, The Beautiful Country is the type of film that refuses to hold your hand and lead you along; it wanders, but always with an ultimate destination in mind (be it physical, or spiritual). And despite some minor stumbles along the way (beware the arrival of Tim Roth), by the time you arrive at its delicate ending, you'll find it hard to shake. BRADLEY STEINBACHER