Yes is a love story quite unlike any other. It will especially appeal to those that believe the spoken word never went out of fashion. Borrowing from the rich literary tradition of Shakespeare, John Donne, Alexander Pope, et al, it explores deep emotions and burning metaphysical and political questions through witty exchanges, written in iambic pentametre, between two lovers.

Using verse instead of dialogue might have come across as a rather artificial device, even in a full-blown romantic drama such as this, but instead writer-director Sally Potter's thoroughly modern and often raunchy script is all the more impressive for it. There is a certain formality to the language, as you'd expect, but the delivery here is much more natural than the sing-song type renditions of poetry you might remember from Eng lit. class. The rhyming dialogue offers clarity for intelligence and deeper thoughts to shine through, and it is delivered by a fine cast in the natural lilt of everyday language.

Potter says she started writing the screenplay immediately after September 11 because, "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... instinctively I turned to love and to verse."

Joan Allen plays a high-flying, but unhappy molecular scientist, only refered to here as "She", who is trapped in a loveless marriage with an aloof politician (the ever reliable Sam Neill).

"He" (a debonair Simon Abkarian) at first appears as a Middle Eastern Don Juan who, while serving tables at a banquet, notices her distress, flirts with her, and makes a date. As one line goes, "conversation is an aphrodisiac" and a passionate affair that is as wordy as it is physical develops between the two.

At first, He bursts onto her frozen existence like life-giving sun. He was a surgeon in Beirut, until sickened by the violence, He left to become a cook in London. As the clandestine romps continue, the lovers' conversation turns on their differences. She, an American of Irish extraction, is no stranger to loneliness and says she understands the pain of his exile. However, after He has a confrontation at work, done effectively with a series of sweary couplets with other kitchen workers, a chasm opens between the two. You could read the relationship as a love story or an allegory of two sides struggling to come together - East and West, Christian and Muslim, the have and the have-not - against the creeping influence of negativity.

Areas of the story are hazy, like She's responsibilities toward a self-absorbed, teenage step-daughter. Joan Allan is a powerful emotional presence, but Potter's focus on She's internal life, often using interior monologues, means frustratingly scant coverage of her relationships playing out. The narrative arc is not always a smooth one. For instance, there is a memorable scene in a Belfast hospital with She at the death bed of a beloved, leftie aunt, but the scene seems awkwardly tacked on.

Visually the film is striking, with unusual camera angles emphasising the artfulness of the film. Stark sets convey the emptiness of She's life outside of the love scenes which by comparison abound with luscious food imagery and colour. She's dull kitchen could be dressed for a Brechtian play. I couldn't see a single kitchen implement on the sideboards. When She and her husband sit down to the evening meal it is as if they are sitting as subjects for a still life painting.

I haven't even mentioned She making a videotape message to God. Or the pixieish cleaning maid who talks in metaphysics about the durability of dirt.

For all its strangeness, the film brims with fierce intelligence. With the recent bombings in London, and the escalating carnage in Iraq, it is a timely reminder to live for Yes and not No.