Sally Potter began writing Yes—the story of a passionate affair between an Irish-American woman and a Middle Eastern man in London—in the days following September 11th, 2001. “I felt an urgent need to respond to the rapid demonization of the Arabic world in the West, and to the parallel wave of hatred against America,” explains the director. “These characters are not just symbols of the Middle East or America—though of course they bring those layers of meaning into the film with them—they’re complete human beings.”

To underscore the universality of her themes, Potter names her two leads simply “He” and “She.” She (played by Joan Allen) is a microbiologist, unhappily married to an inexpressive politician (Sam Neill); he is a Lebanese surgeon now doing menial work in a hotel kitchen. Written almost entirely in iambic pentameter—delivered so naturally audiences may not notice for quite some time—the film confronts themes of alienation and prejudice, identity and romantic longing with gentle humanity and a keen sense of emotional vulnerability. As is typical of Potter’s work, Yes embraces the complex tug of cultural difference, affording even secondary characters—like a philosophical maid, wonderfully played by Shirley Henderson—the intellectual space to evolve. Fluid, fearless, and ferociously intelligent, Yes is a master class on how to approach a hot-button topic. Ridley Scott should be taking notes.

Reverse Shot: This is probably your most ambitious film to date, dealing with race, sex, politics, religion, and women’s attitudes toward their own bodies. Why tackle so many issues?

Sally Potter: It’s a risk, there are people who get pissed off if someone is seen to be ambitious. The film is not just about family values, or a modest female domestic drama. It takes on big global issues: Is there a God? What’s the relationship between science and religion? What is it like to die? And then it’s all in verse!

But my feeling is that everybody is dealing with these issues. We’re all questioning the nature of information fed to us by authorities. In the secret recesses of our brains we’re asking things like, Do I love the person I’m married to, or should I be with somebody else?

RS: How have people reacted to the iambic pentameter?

SP: Most people don’t even notice, and that’s fine with me. My direction to the actors was to naturalize it, to ignore the verse and just relate to the words from your heart. We worked very hard to make it natural—there are no long words in the film, just ordinary language rearranged.

Iambic pentameter is one of the oldest forms of verse, and it lets you talk about things in a lyrical way and introduce ideas that might otherwise be indigestible.

RS: You begin and end the film with a soliloquy on dirt.

SP: I left school at 15 and my very first job was cleaning houses! And the more I wrote the character of the cleaner, the more I thought about cleaners and their indignities, and the fact that they do see it all—the stains in the bed, everything. They’re dealing with our detritus, yet they’re completely ignored. So I made the cleaner in this film—who’s definitely not a member of the elite—the true philosopher. She’s the one who gets to say the most profound things about existence. This is of course a Greek chorus device; when you’re dealing with heavy themes it’s very important to have moments of levity which can, ironically, end up conveying the most serious message of all.

RS: Like the humorous scene in the hotel kitchen.

SP: It’s a very profane scene, because there’s something lively and vital in a conversation filled with swear words—it’s a kind of music. But that’s how people try to figure out their lives, by bouncing ideas off one another and raising prejudices. When I was in my late teens I also worked in kitchens, and I think people in very unrecognized jobs—the dishwashers of this world—are searching for someone to blame for the fact that they’re not currently making a success of their lives.

RS: You’re often categorized as a ‘woman’s director,’ even though you write very powerful scenes for men.

SP: There’s a blindness here I don’t understand. Again and again I’m spoken of as a woman’s director, perhaps because I write very rounded female characters in central roles and that’s still very unusual. But I have to ask, Is romance just a woman’s issue? Haven’t you noticed that most of the characters [in Yes] are male? The male lead is from the Middle East and I spent a lot of time imagining myself in his head, into all the men’s heads. There’s a lyricism in the Middle Eastern character’s speech that’s very full and present and I read a lot of Middle Eastern poetry to get the flavor.

RS: Why did you make both of your leads scientists?

SP: That idea just grew, partly because a microbiologist would be looking at the world in relation to the very small—just as the cleaner does when she’s dealing with particles of dirt. And there’s a point at which the very small starts to link with the very large, with questions of God and existence. Issues of scale were always a subtext. I also liked the idea of making her a rationalist, someone who believes in science and the material world but is also a lapsed Catholic. Her religion is always in the back of her mind, pulling at her.

RS: Were there any particularly difficult scenes?

SP: Everyone went into this film with enormous gusto, but we did have difficult moments. The core of the film is the parking garage scene—it’s the ultimate bleak urban environment, built for cars and things on the move. There’s no softness. So if you put a soft, fleshy human with all her vulnerabilities in the middle of that it’s the ultimate contrast. When you have this kind of contradiction between actor and setting it creates very powerful dramatic tension. But this scene just exhausted everyone, we never felt it was quite as good as it had been in rehearsal. There’s also a lot of movement in this film, and we needed lots of practice for Joan running in those high heels! Though she moves beautifully; she has a kind of Tippi Hedren look in the film, and we had a lot of fun finding clothes for her.

RS: What were your main obstacles to making the film?

SP: Getting the money! Having a project written in verse, with a primary Middle Eastern character, didn’t exactly fill producers with confidence. But then I’ve never had money thrown at me, and the reason is that every film I make is a different kind of risk. Before Orlando it was, Oh you can’t do that, Virginia Woolf is the kiss of death; then after it was released, everyone was saying, Sally, would you like to make a costume drama with a sex change in it? After The Tango Lesson they wanted another tango film. They just want you to do the same thing you’ve already proven can be done, they need those guarantees. My propensity for risk-taking is very difficult to indulge in a risk-averse film culture, and Yes was politically, as well as formally, risky. On the other hand, I had no difficulty at all getting actors to do the film—actors are on the whole very courageous.