Main Cast: Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton, Tori Spelling, Freddie Prinze, Jr., Geneviève Bujold
Release Year: 1997
Country: US
Run Time: 90 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
A wealthy young man wants to wed a painfully ordinary girl, and a few hours with his family will convince anyone why he's doing so in this black comedy. Marty Pascal (Josh Hamilton) is engaged to marry Lesly (Tori Spelling), a dizzy blonde he met when she was working at a doughnut shop, and he bravely decides that it's time she met his family, so he brings her along for Thanksgiving dinner at his mother's house in West Virginia. Bravery is necessary because the Pascals are not an especially healthy or wholesome family. Mother (Genevieve Bujold) explains her philosophy about parenting like so: "You raise cattle; children just happen." In this environment, where refusing your child anything is all but unknown, her youngest son Anthony (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) has grown up to be an overanxious virgin eager to seduce Lesly while Marty's not paying attention. And Marty's twin sister Jackie (Parker Posey), malignily obsessed with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, often re-enacts the murder of JFK using spaghetti sauce for blood (when she can't get ahold of real bullets) and enjoys incestuously seducing Marty (which hardly bothers Mother, who notes that "Jackie's hand was holding Marty's penis when they came out the womb"). The House of Yes was based on the play by Wendy MacLeod; first time director Mark S. Waters (brother of screenwriter Daniel Waters) also adapted the screenplay. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Although its arch banter occasionally falls flat and its claustrophobic production design leaves things a little bit stagebound, this adaptation of playwright Wendy MacLeod's The House of Yes works because of its richly layered script, its frequently hilarious dialogue, and its fine, if unexpected, casting decisions. In his feature debut, writer/director Mark S. Waters displays a deft hand with both brittle comedy and sharp psychological drama as he depicts the emotional and spiritual carnage of the decaying East Coast political gentry. Some audiences mistook the taboo-breaking plot as nothing more than indie titillation, but MacLeod's source material draws on the dramatic lineage of Noel Coward, Harold Pinter, Joe Orton, and Oscar Wilde -- not to mention The Rocky Horror Picture Show -- as it dissects an upper-crust dynasty's disaffection and permissiveness (check the title). The Pascal family belongs to the lower rungs of the Washington, D.C., social establishment, but its members proclaim their disdain for bourgeois values in deliciously tart aphorisms and epigrams. Indie darling Parker Posey plays the showiest role and therefore garnered the most critical attention, but it's actually Tori Spelling and Freddie Prinze Jr. whose performances prove the most surprising. Shrugging off their substance-free images, both young actors exercise subtlety and precision as their characters -- a wholesome "donut queen" and the kid brother of a pair of incestuous fraternal twins -- provide the vox populi to Posey and Genevieve Bujold's haughty entitlement. In a role that echoes Katharine Hepburn's in Suddenly Last Summer, Bujold is the epitome of regal wit and matriarchal ennui, but mention must be made of Josh Hamilton's equally dextrous prodigal son. The plot hinges on Marty's desire to escape his family's House of Usher-like degeneration, which makes it all the more wickedly pleasurable to watch him slide into old habits the minute he's exposed to the seductive familiarity of his twisted clan. Posey sometimes plays the spoiled, skewed Jackie-O a bit too broadly, but the minute Hamilton joins her onscreen, their characters start completing one another's sentences as only real-life twins (and lovers) truly could. In magnifying the maddeningly inextricable pull of the familial bond, House of Yes touches on truths more universal than its privileged setting might suggest. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Andrew Cahn - Art Director, Mary Vernieu - Associate Producer, Ken Ginnaty - Boom Operator, Mary Vernieu - Casting, Jeffrey L. Davidson - Co-producer, Ron Wechsler - Co-producer, Edi Giguere - Costume Designer, Melanie Lewison - Costume Designer, Michael Alperowitz - First Assistant Director, David Sage - First Assistant Director, Mark S. Waters - Director, Pamela Martin - Editor, Robert Berger - Executive Producer, Scott Silver - Executive Producer, Jason Rail - Hair Styles, Daniel Curet - Hair Styles, Robert J. Ferrara - Lighting, Rolfe Kent - Composer (Music Score), Jeff Rona - Songwriter, Jason Rail - Makeup, Daniel Curet - Makeup, Patrick Sherman - Production Designer, Marjorie Chodorov - Production Designer, Michael Spiller - Cinematographer, Beau Flynn - Producer, Stefan Simchowitz - Producer, Ann Shea - Set Designer, Debra Echard - Set Designer, Dan Monahan - Sound Mixer, Jed M. Dodge - Sound Editor, Robert W. Vandling - Sound Editor, Jeffrey L. Davidson - Unit Production Manager, Mark S. Waters - Screenwriter, Wendy MacLeod - Play Author
On Thanksgiving Day, 1983, student Marty Pascal (Josh Hamilton) brings his fiancée, Lesly (Tori Spelling), home to his family's Washington D.C. estate to meet them for the first time. Although Lesly is excited at the prospect of meeting her future in-laws, Marty is obviously nervous and hesitant about the impending introduction of his future wife to his family; he has informed them that he is bringing a guest but without any further details.
Marty's family prepares both for his arrival and for an impending hurricane. Marty's twin sister Jackie (Parker Posey), recently released from a psychiatric hospital, is ecstatic about his arrival, until she is informed that a "friend" is accompanying Marty. She becomes distressed and, over the course of the night, shows many signs that suggest she suffers from bipolar disorder, including sudden mood swings and an inability to cope with change.
Referred to as "Jackie-O" by her family, Jackie has had a long obsession with the former first lady and the Kennedy assassination. As an adult, Jackie-O still emulates the former first lady in her style of dress and her hairstyle.
Jackie-O lives with her mother and her younger brother Anthony (Freddie Prinze, Jr.). He and the matriarch of the family, Mrs. Pascal (Geneviève Bujold) are very protective of Jackie. Mrs. Pascal is immediately suspicious and guarded against her future daughter-in-law Lesly.
Meanwhile, Lesly is initially oblivious to the tumultuous nature of the family. It is clear that Marty is in love with Lesly's "normalcy" and their engagement is a way for him to break from his family mold.
As the hurricane outside intensifies, Marty and Lesly become stranded in the house until the storm lets up. After meeting Lesly, Jackie-O comes close to a melt-down at her bathroom sink, yet suddenly gains her composure and surprises Lesly. Jackie playfully interrogates Lesly about her love life with Marty, going so far as to ask for graphic details about their sexual escapades. Jackie-O informs Lesly of a nearby former girlfriend of Marty's, with whom he shared an intense affair in his youth and hints that there might be a "reunion" between the two former lovers.
It becomes clear that Marty's lover was in fact Jackie-O after she coerces Marty into playing their favorite childhood "game," a re-enactment of the JFK assassination, a game that led to their first sexual encounter when they were 14. Jackie-O and Marty play the game, and after she has "shot" him, she runs over to cradle him in her arms. She begins to kiss him, and the two have sex. Lesly walks in on them and, horrified, runs back upstairs where Anthony, who previously tried to warn her of Marty and Jackie's sexual relationship, convinces Lesly that he is an insecure virgin dying of a brain tumor, leading to a short and awkward sexual encounter.
In the morning, Lesly confronts the family about the events of the night before. Mrs. Pascal coerces Anthony to tell Marty that he slept with Lesly.
Meanwhile, Jackie-O searches the house for a gun that Marty had been ordered to hide by their mother, finding it in the bathroom. She flushes Marty's car keys down the toilet and returns to the living room where Lesly confronts Jackie-O about her mental illness and incestuous relationship.
As Lesly runs to get their suitcases so she and Marty can leave, Jackie pulls the gun and asks Marty to play their game one last time, agreeing to let them leave afterward. Anthony races to find her medication while Marty cautiously plays along. In tears, Jackie shoots and kills her brother. Lesly runs from the house. In a voice over, Jackie explains that Marty was buried in the backyard "next to Daddy."
