'YES' TAKES A PRETENTIOUS TURN FOR THE VERSE.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

ALTERNATING between flowery feminist fantasy and the heavy-handed guilt that afflicts well-heeled liberals, the mere pretentiousness of Sally Potter's ``Yes'' would be annoying enough.

But her decision to have the characters speak almost entirely in iambic pentameter tips the scales even further, creating a movie that drowns in the shallow pool of its own self-importance.

There are two main characters here: She and He. She (Joan Allen) is an Irish-American biologist who works in a blue-lit laboratory, the color scheme meant to highlight the icy nature of She's home life. Her husband, (The Other He?, played by Sam Neill) is a Scotch-swilling politician who shows more interest in B.B. King's guitar playing than he does in his wife.

So She meets a man, He (Simon Abkarian), a Lebanese doctor reduced to working as a cook since moving to London from Beirut. Chopping vegetables is a poor substitute for surgery and as She becomes more needy, He becomes more angry at his lot in life.

What begins as a friendship and then love affair turns into a full-blown, post-9/11 culture clash where East berates West (or He berates She, take your pick) for its money and privilege and utter cluelessness while West counters that it's being unfairly judged and that being white shouldn't be equated with narrow-mindedness.

Obviously, He and She are meant to be teaching us some Important Lessons, which would be OK if said lessons weren't so simplistic and didn't feel like they were being shoved down our throats. The worst of it comes with Potter's numerous cutaways to the illegal immigrants populating the restaurants and hotels of She's world, each shot ending with the subject gazing plaintively into Potter's camera. Subtlety isn't Potter's strong suit.

You want a look at the cultural divide between haves and have-nots and the lives of the invisible people? Rent Stephen Frears' brilliant thriller ``Dirty Pretty Things.'' As for ``Yes,'' just say no.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

YES - Two stars

(R: language, some sexual content)

Starring: Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian.

Director: Sally Potter.

Running time: 1 hr. 40 min.

Playing: Laemmle's Town Center 5 in Encino; Laemmle's Playhouse 7 in Pasadena; Laemmle's Sunset 5 in West Hollywood; Laemmle's Royal in West Los Angeles.

In a nutshell: Pretentious look at the culture divide between East and West, spoken almost entirely in iambic pentameter.

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He (Simon Abkarian) and She (Joan Allen) embark on a romance and confront their cultural biases - all in iambic pentameter, no less - in ``Yes.''