One of his lesser known works still in circulation, YES! is a rather standard story of a young girl being introduced to lesbian love, Joe Sarno style.
It's underwhelming reaction among his cult of fans is probably due to it being buried in the Something Weird catalog. Though SWV does provide a Swedish-track coming attraction, the film is only available in a poorly-dubbed into English version.
I had trouble with the central casting: Gunilla Iwansson portrays Ingrid, the cleft-jawed blonde heroine who frankly is unattractive. The fact that she never had a film career following this leading role underscores my point -clearly had Joe cast someone as lovely or exciting as his INGA girl Marie Liljedahl or the fabulous Diana Kjaer his movie would have taken off.
Ingrid is a country girl who quickly joins the Stockholm in-crowd by way of working as a model for fashion designer Lisa (Gun Falck, a striking Claire Bloom type). Latter has the lesbian hots for Lisa, and we must endure reel after reel of unrequited longing until Sarno finally dishes out the promised porn.
At times the plaintive musical score suggests similar moods to Lalo Schifrin's brilliant accompaniment for the most successful lesbian movie of the period, Mark Rydell's adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's THE FOX, but that film's romanticism does not surface here. Instead Sarno settles for lots of the "youth picture" filler that marred INGA, with boring party and nightclub scenes of young people dancing around. It's dated and boring, without say the nostalgia value of watching old kinescopes of Dick Clark's "American Bandstand".
Heinz Hopf, sort of Scandi's answer to Klaus Kinski & Udo Kier, has a fun turn as Lisa's tres gay assistant, constantly insulting or bickering with Ingrid. The characterization of Ingrid's parents is poorly done, with daddy always ready to make excuses and prevaricate in order to let her sow her oats in Stockholm, over the objections of rightly protective mama.
As a Cannon release in America in 1969, before that company made the big time with its hit JOE and later became the plaything of the Israeli Golan-Globus scheisters, YES! is awfully tame in the sex department. Gunilla shows her jugs occasionally, but full nudity and strong sex simulation scenes were already de rigeur at U.S. adult cinemas.
