Streaming: ˋYes, God, Yes’ not enough of a turn-on

“Yes, God, Yes” brings us into the hallways of a private Catholic high school replete with abstinence posters and a hall monitor checking the length of girls’ skirts. The students take courses with names like “Morality” and Alice (Natalia Dyer) asks her best friend Laura (Francesca Reale), “Have you watched the partial birth abortion video?”

The events of the film occur at the turn of the 21st century, so the biggest illicit thrill for Christian teens is entering an AOL chat room and “cyber”-ing with strangers. For unknown reasons, Alice’s bible thumping classmates create a rumor that she’s committed a lewd act so sinful that she’s forced to take a weekend long retreat at Kirkos, a rural camp situated even closer to Jesus than the high school.

There, an already concerned Father Murphy (Timothy Simons) gets very upset when Alice’s circles “turned-on” as an emotion on her feelings quiz. To make matters worse, Alice gets paired up with a handsome counselor called Chris (Wolfgang Novogratz, wearing arm hair extensions to lend him a manlier look). She fakes a twisted ankle on a hike so he has to carry her back to the bunkhouse. Just when Alice is about to use her Nokia cell phone’s vibrate function to further explore her feelings for Chris, counselor Nina (Alisha Boe) confiscates it and makes Alice clean the mess hall as punishment.

These are some of the main events in this quiet film, which does little to differentiate itself from a mid-tier episode of “Gilmore Girls.” The biggest laugh line is about s’mores: “We pretended each marshmallow was a mortal sin before roasting it.” We glimpse some early internet porn, but the film merely underlines an utterly obvious point: every teen—and many adults, devout or otherwise—are very horny all the time. Thoughout “Yes, God, Yes” writer/director Karen Maine’s execution underwhelms—Alice is a thin reed to carry the whole narrative, and none of the other characters are more than sketches.

Alice finally finds the safe space she needs at a lesbian biker bar down the road from Kirkos. Destiny arrives, as it so often does, in the form of a silver-haired queer oracle—Jesus has fewer answers for Alice than Gina (Susan Blackwell). As she sips a wine cooler, Alice learns at last the definition of the sexual act she’s accused of undertaking and takes the sage advice to get out of dodge for her college years. Gina also explains that it isn’t a sin to re-watch the steamy car scene in “Titanic” with a battery-powered back massager in hand, so Alice does that as soon as she gets home.