Perhaps. Although I find each viewer has varying intelligence. Some get the story immediately, others miss points or don't understand certain aspects, and as I found out earlier some fail to follow the story at all or get confused over things as simple as who is the villain.
I give far more credit to the audience than I should. However, I'd rather explain to people what certain gestures meant in the movie rather than leave them out and cheapen the production.
Instead of making the film an effort for viewers to understand, you might try simply making things clearer.
Rule of thumb: don't make the acting of your film difficult to understand/unclear simply because you don't want to 'cheapen the production' - infact, there's really no reason at all for you to ever allow the acting to be unclear.
I can nearly promise you that the vast majority of your audience would prefer a film where they can watch it and clearly see and understand what is happening, rather than have to have you explain the film to them in the thread and question their intelligence for sake of not 'cheapening the production'.
