Adapted from the Wendy MacLeod play, Mark Waters's The House of Yes is a
house of cards -- a flimsy structure of forced whimsy, contrived absurdity, and
hit-and-miss outrageousness held together by two shrewd and powerful
performances. One is from the ubiquitous Parker Posey, who turns in her best
work to date in her most over-the-top role as Jackie-O, the privileged,
psychopathic daughter of the serenely twisted Mrs. Pascal -- who's played with
equal brilliance by Geneviève Bujold.
It seems that long ago, on the day John Kennedy was assassinated, Mr. Pascal
mysteriously disappeared and Jackie-O developed a fetishistic fascination with
Camelot, especially the late president's widow, whom she dresses up as. She
also developed an unusually intense affection for her twin brother, Marty (a
bumptious Josh Hamilton). Her host of symptoms, barely controlled by chemicals,
erupt when Marty visits the family manse at the height of a hurricane with his
new, blue-collar fiancée Lesly (a horsy Tori Spelling) in tow. The
family dysfunctions mount with the storm, and what begins as promising farce
collapses into nonsense. Fortunately, all the best lines belong to Posey and
Bujold, who deliver them with, respectively, acid hysteria and regal
malevolence, providing the stabilizing eye for this histrionic hurricane. At
the Kendall Square.
--Peter Keough
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