Excess is not an uncommon feature of satires; gross caricatures are as good a way as any to skewer the powers that be. Within seconds, it is apparent that Yes is, intentionally, a satire of this sort. The 1990s hit “Be My Lover” by La Bouche is blasting as a couple, Y (Ariel Bronz) and Yasmin (Efrat Dor), kiss passionately in front of a crowd at a lavish pool party in Tel Aviv. As the party heats up, everyone’s behavior becomes more antic. The camera swirls, lights flash, and drugs and sex toys are both in the mix. Everyone is making exaggerated and stupid faces. Y ends up falling into the pool and almost choking on a plastic ball; Yasmin dives in to save him. It also turns out that top officials of both the Israeli government and army are there. In case there is any chance we missed that we might be watching a film aiming to eviscerate decadence by embracing the grotesque, the camera pans down to a book of paintings by George Grosz, the famous caricaturist of the Weimar Republic.

Y and Yasmin are both artists of sorts. A comedian, Y’s career seems to be flatlining, though he is often admitted into the top echelon of Israeli society. Yasmin is a former dancer, now a workout instructor. They have a child who was born just after October 7, 2023, and because of the trauma, they have resolved to say yes to everything. This means that, in every conceivable way, they have sold their souls to the military elite. They do their best to party, to blast music instead of the news, and to drown themselves in hedonism to avoid thinking about what is happening in Gaza. (Every time a notification shows up on their phones about the death toll, we hear offscreen sounds of screaming and destruction.) This changes, however, when Y, who is also a former musician, agrees to compose a national anthem to sanction the destruction of Gaza.

The whole first section, in which there is so much partying that it almost feels like a music video, is done with such a degree of stylistic skill and visual imagination that it can make the viewer forgive director Nadav Lapid’s heavy-handedness. It is, in essence, a portrait of exactly how blind you need to be, and how vigorously one must work to maintain blindness, when your government is engaged in atrocities less than 100 miles away. The acting is strong and fully committed, the shots are arranged with variety, and the stylistic flourishes (blurry screens, swirling cameras) are purposeful, even if there are too many of them.

What is odd is that the film loses its bite the more pointed the satire becomes. As soon as Y starts composing his anthem, the lyrics are so heavy-handed and every turn of the script is such a clichéd version of a Faustian pact that the storyline starts losing momentum like a deflating balloon. Additionally, not every added dimension makes sense—Yasmin ends up disgusted with Y and almost leaves him, while she has not shown any sign of disagreement earlier with him for selling out. There are also intriguing intrusions of a narrator who sometimes gives hints of Y’s past and of his relationship with his recently deceased mother, who did not live to see the October 7 attacks. This direction is not fully explored.

I finished Yes with a sense of how hard it is to make films about current events so soon after they have occurred, and yet I respect this director for trying.