Yella is something of an amalgam of Carnival of Souls, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and Jacob's Ladder. These derivatives notwithstanding, Yella shows flashes of genius in its compositional elements - it is a very quiet film for instance, very serenely composed as the underlying score of Beethoven's piano sonata suggests, and certainly not a waste of time. My summation is that as the eponymous heroine is dying she experiences the reverie of life, and, as in a dream, things become mixed up, hence here, the new guy Philip is in fact the old guy who kills her by driving his Landrover off the bridge. Note the physical resemblance between the two for a start. If you watch the film there are many residual effects like this: the bourgeois family for example represents her dreamlike aspiration of a future taking real form; she imagines a possible world for her as it might have happened in those few fleeting moments as the life goes out of her. There is a definite dreamlike, lackadaisical quality about the whole thing. Another film that springs to mind, which resonates on some level, is Paolo Sorrentino's exercise in style, Le Conseguenze dell'Amore. In some ironic way, this title would not be out of place for Yella.
Review of Yella
