When love presents itself to us, how do we react? Do we embrace love in whatever form it comes? Or do we say no because the timing is off, the situation is awkward, or because the person is of the “wrong” gender? That, in a nutshell, is the question Say Yes asks us and encourages us to answer in the affirmative. In case there was any doubt, the film lays its cards on the table in the first scene: It begins with a marriage proposal video where Lily (Leah McKendrick) exclaims that her boyfriend Beau (Patrick Zeller) is crazy for setting up such an elaborate proposal scenario and then happily answers “yes, yes, yes, yes, of course!”
Say Yes is an independent film, the kind that dives into larger questions about the human condition and manages to punch far above the weight of its budget. Such films used to make a big splash at film festivals and then disappear except for mail-order catalogs and specialty video stores. Happily, we now live in the age of streaming where anyone with a screen, an internet connection, and $2.99 can watch Say Yes on their own schedule and from the comfort of their own home.
Say Yes enters some very well-traveled waters of the LGBTI film genre: same-sex love bubbles to the surface between men whom we originally believe to be straight. It’s the stuff of queer men’s fantasies, with same-sex desire buried beneath taboos, social conditioning, and personal identity, but waiting to burst forth like a volcano, just as many of us experienced in our own coming out process. Fortunately, Say Yes avoids the cliches of that tired, worn-out trope and not only because of Lily’s tragic storyline.
As with all Unicorn Scale reviews, this one will contain SPOILERS because we’re here to discuss bi representation in media. If you are not yet familiar with the Unicorn Scale or our rating system, please take a look at the original Unicorn Scale article.
What I Liked:
In the best tradition of independent film, Say Yes gives us many small, relatable moments that pull us into the story and make it believable. The characters are layered and they’re given plenty of moments to be vulnerable and real within the complex situation in which they find themselves.
We first get wind of a potential spark between Beau and Lily’s twin brother Caden (Matt Pascua) when the three of them end up sleeping (platonically and fully clothed) in the same bed with Lily in the middle. Lily gets up in the wee hours of the night, presumably to go to the bathroom, and goes back to sleep on the less-crowded edge of the bed. When she wakes up the next day, Lily looks over and smiles from ear to ear when she sees the two men she loves most in the world spooning and sporting, as she announces with glee, “morning wood!”
Beau falls out of bed with embarrassment, quickly covering his erection with a pillow, while Caden remarks that it was nice to be held for a change. They joke it off, saying that Caden needs to get out more, but in the next scene the two are jogging and for a brief moment we see Caden's eyes drawn to the outline of Beau’s penis in shorts that allude to the kind of grey sweatpants that have been an internet meme since before the days of social media. This may seem subtle to some, but for those of us who spent years in the confusing liminal space between a bi man’s socially approved and supported heterosexual attractions and his forbidden same-sex attractions, the irresistible force of repressed desire those sequences betrays is all too relatable.
But let’s be honest, the film’s premise is unusual: Lily has terminal cancer and wants to make sure the two men she loves most in the world are not alone when she passes. As Beau and Caden grow closer while living together and taking care of Lily, she decides she’d like to see the two of them together — as in, physically and romantically. It’s the kind of plotline that could go very wrong and very cheesy. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen in Say Yes.
As the film progresses, we find out that Caden is a bi man of the “I-don’t-need-labels-all-labels-work-it-was-just-sex-words-don’t-define-me” variety. In other words, he’s a pretty common type of bi guy, the kind who hasn’t yet found a peaceful resolution to the dissonance between his attractions, identity, and behavior. Lily herself, the film eventually reveals, appears to be a Kinsey 1: heteroflexible. She had a girlfriend in college and doesn’t think twice or worry about what people might think when she wears a “Dyke Power” T-shirt to her job as a barista. Once all this is clear, her openness to setting up her husband with her twin brother starts to seem less far-fetched. As the film progresses, Beau slowly discovers, with considerable reluctance, that he’s also something akin to a Kinsey 1.
I really appreciated that the film explores the tension between attraction, behavior, and identity. Beau goes through all kinds of mental gymnastics to reconcile the fact that he’s experiencing feelings that don’t align with his sense of himself as straight. Although labeling oneself LGBTI has never been an easy process in our largely homo-, trans-, and biphobic world, as our society has grown increasingly polarized over the past two decades, identity has become ever more important in determining one’s sense of place in the world, one’s “tribe”.
But sexuality is so much more than an identity; it isn’t just about how a person defines themself or sees their place in the world, it’s also about what makes them tick, what fuels their passions and innermost desires.
One of my favorite moments of the film is when Caden calls out Beau’s virtue signaling for posting #LoveIsLove about the anniversary of the Pulse massacre in Orlando. It’s easy and low risk to use social media to show how Woke or Progressive you are. It’s a way to use other people’s tragedies and struggles to increase your social standing with your peers that is ultimately all about you. If you post something like that and then turn around and cringe at the possibility of discovering that you might be LGBTI yourself, how much of your allyship was meaningful?
On the evening following Lily’s death, Beau and Caden are overcome with grief and, in their emotional state, finally have sex. It’s not exactly an exercise in good judgment and, sure enough, it creates unnecessary confusion and drama. But this too I found smart and realistic scriptwriting. I’ve been organizing bi communities for most of my adult life and I can tell you that if there is any pattern that I see over and over again with bi men, it’s that they can forget everything they’ve ever learned in their relationships with women and revert to teenage-like behavior when they first open themselves up to their same-sex attractions.
What I Didn’t Like:
I’m not quite going to elevate this to “didn’t like”, but Say Yes clearly isn’t here to tick off my wish list as a bi activist or to be an ideal example of bi representation. And that’s ok. It’s a depiction of the world in which we live, not of the one of which I dream. The characters, like so much of our society, don’t really seem to understand bisexuality. And how could they? Our society remains even more scared of bisexuality than it is of homosexuality because on top of the “icky sex part”, the mere existence of bisexuality creates unwelcome ambiguity; it messes with straight people’s ability to safely sequester gays and lesbians to a separate category of “other”.
And on the flip side of the coin, gays and lesbians also frequently define their own sexuality along a hard line between male and female, between the sex they’re attracted to and the one they are not. Many struggled with owning their sexuality and having to let go of the potential of a heterosexual life, and many gays and lesbians seem to carry deep personal hurt around the topic and can be quite biphobic. Even the massive activist organizations that operate under the LGBTI banner don’t really know what to do with us, let alone educate about bisexuality or advocate for our acceptance and wellbeing.
The Rating:
All that said, I acknowledge that having the characters recognize and be comfortable with bisexuality as a broad concept for a wide range of attractions, identities, and behaviors would have resolved a great deal of the narrative tension and, well, made this a film about something else. This is a story about how we respond when life presents us with the possibility of love and connection, especially when it comes in ways that don’t necessarily align with our identity, our sense of self. May all of us have the strength and wisdom to let go of our attachments and fears and embrace the opportunities that life offers. In the words of Lily, “It’s your world, it’s your happiness. Fuck everybody else. Say yes!”
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