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IF Yes, Okay / Als uw gat maar lacht

Director Dick Verdult
2023

If Yes, Okay is a black comedy by director Dick Verdult and tells the story of Amy, a young girl from a wealthy family who has never been told “No” in her entire life.

To dispel her boredom, she decides one day to hire a complete theater company to have scenes from her life reenacted in a shed set up as a theater near her parents’ house.

Gradually, as theater and reality start to merge more and more, Amy discovers that, contrary to what has always been told to her, the world cannot be made and cannot be controlled just like that. She discovers that life is about fundamentally different things than money and status.

Credits

Cast
Lola Koppen – Amy
Peter Fengler – Driver
Ekaterina Levental – Mother
Harun Bahasoean – Father
Tim Teunissen – Barry
Katrien van Beurden – Rabindranah
Chris Koolmees – Physician
Izah Hankammer – Amy Buki
Karlijn de Groot – Mother Buki
Luk Sponselee – Father Buki
Pedro Buschi – Music teacher
Michiel Romeyn – Assasin

Main crew
Script and director 
Dick Verdult
Director of Photography Luuk Bouwman
Sound Kees de Groot
Production Designers Billy Leliveld
Jan Willem van der Schoot
Make up and hair design Leendert van Nimwegen
Wardrobe Petra Reijnders
Editing Peter Boonstra
Colour grading Laurent Fluttert
Sound Design Jeroen Goeijers
Music Dick Verdult
Production Manager Tomas van Gorp
Associate Producer Harro Presser
Produced for De Productie by Annemiek van Gorp, René Goossens
Made with support of the Netherlands Film Fund and Brabant C

© De Productie 2023

Press

 

The press about If Yes, Okay following screenings at the Bafici Film Festival Argentina 2023

Juan Cardenas  on If Yes, Okay:

If Yes, Okay (2023), Dick Verdult’s latest film, seems to take place in political purgatory where a family of billionaires and their servants are constantly condemned to repeat -under the sign of parody and farce- domestic rituals of Big Capital. Supersonic blender of genres–orientalist soap opera with connections in the conspiracies of industry and mafia, sequence of K-pop dioramas, display of horrors–If Yes, Okay can be read as an out-of-order musical that seeks above all to show all the ideological seams, without a classic separation between song and dramatic scenes. Perhaps that’s why the characters’ voices walk on a subtly loose tightrope between song, the storytelling of cabaret and the abrasion of proverbs. “The smaller the cage, the prettier the singing,” says one of the characters at the beginning of the film. Verdult’s cannibal fire has all the meat on the grate and in the smoke you can smell the aroma of the cadavers of twentieth-century cinema, but above all the promise of audiovisual experiences to come.

Bafici:

The persistent excessiveness of his style, more than a skill, is a moral, a law of life. This comedy seems made with the material found in perverse dreams. Overwhelming and addictive.

Page 12-newspaper Bafici Film Festival:

Verdult now commands the camera and he does so without austerity. Not economically nor creatively. Extravagant scenography, family conflicts and his own seal: that music that comes from another planet. Come on, we have boundless appetite for that.

Cinerrama and Perro Blanco:

If Yes Okay is an example of films that monitor the soul of the times without accounting for the most frequent and platitudinous demands, films that in a way live by their deviations and contradictions, films that breathe with the freedom, brutality and also the untrustworthiness of prehistoric creatures that have hit bad days, merciless days.

Indie Hoy:

It is a viewer’s choice to lose themselves in the delirium of the absurd in this hilarious comedy or leave the theater.

If Yes Okay presents the viewer with complete abandonment, without bowing to straightforwardness, dialogue coherence or credibility. It is an actual leap of faith.

Cine Argentino Hoy:

Dick Verdult fuses opposite elements to create something completely new. Each piece of work is a kind of puzzle, a composition of very disparate elements that become one in a surprising way. This film comedy does not escape that method.

A mixture of humor, erotic content and dream, intertwined in a musicalization that is entirely in keeping with the piece of work, and with photography that resembles surrealist paintings, make the film unquestionably a stamp of its author. 95/100 points

Espectaculos de Aca:

In a well-nigh dreamlike aesthetic, and a musicalization that keeps the narrative in tune, the film, without confusing the viewer, unfolds reality and a theatrical play that is being developed, with sounds playing a fundamental role, regularly creating a hallucinatory effect. If Yes Okay invites you to sit opposite the screen, to play with abstractions, exaggerations, intertwined messages, and to permanently dance with the meanings. Without a doubt, a film that reflects a way of thinking, experiencing and feeling art.

Pantalla partida:

But there are ways to tell a story, and there are ways. There is where Dick Verdult has a surprise for viewers. At times, near a surrealism of dream, the narration stutters to make existence difficult for the audience, an audience that remains expectant even though Verdult makes it so hard for them. Toward the end, the spectacle approaches delirium, but by then, the people present at the piece know something of what it is about, and are already part of the experiment.

Cinergia On Line:

This is a furious up and down of perceptions that explores the diffuse territory of hunger for identity and definitions of the beings that surround us. The art-direction and photography are on point and lead to an interesting atmosphere that exactly matches the details of the story. The music also plays a fundamental role, with an eclectic soundtrack that leads to a new audio-visual experience and a high emotional intensity.

La Butacaweb:

Most likely, If Yes Okay is one of the most underground performances in the festival, it is a film with a strong imprint of the author you hate or love, there is no middle ground, we accept the madness and acid surrealism of the director or we turn our heads to find something more tolerable.

More about Dick Verdult

M van Misverstand
Een portret van Dick Verdult
walterslosse.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/m-van-misverstand

De C van Calanda.
Over de trommels van Calanda.
walterslosse.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/c-van-calanda/

P van Treurende Papegaai.
Het bezoek aan Yanomami en de hoogste berg van de Amazone. Dick Verdult was als coach voor het filmen meegegaan, en deed dan tevens het geluid. Mooie verhalen.
walterslosse.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/p-van-treurende-papegaai/

P van Padre Teresa
Over een festival ter ere van Vader Teresa op de dag dat Moeder Teresa werd zalig verklaard.
walterslosse.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/p-van-padre-teresa/

Nooit Meer Slapen, over de IFFR-première van If Yes, Okay / Als Uw Gat Maar Lacht
radio1.frontend.nporadio.nl/podcasts/nooit-meer-slapen/84411/dick-verdult-kunstenaar-filmmaker