I Am Curious... (I Am Curious Yellow / I Am Curious Blue Set) (The Criterion Collection)

I Am Curious... (I Am Curious Yellow / I Am Curious Blue Set) (The Criterion Collection)

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Movie Reviews of I Am Curious... (I Am Curious Yellow / I Am Curious Blue Set) (The Criterion Collection)

Movie Review: Political Correctness confronts conscience and reality...
Summary: 5 Stars

However, in spite of apparent anti-US sentiments (which amount to not much more than depiction of anti-Vietnam War demonstrations,) this is hardly an anti-imperialist, or necessarily anti-US, film. We are all too often deceived by apparent 'clues,' in film and elsewhere. The director actually had another idea, when he made this film, as we shall venture here to show.

It was rather an overview of modern life, and initiation when young into that life's vagaries, that are pursued in I AM CURIOUS (yellow.)

Sexuality: shall we save the viewer some trouble? Understanding of sexuality can be derived elsewhere. Regarding I AM CURIOUS as nothing more than a comic, superficial overview of one young ladie's existence, would be a mistake. It is to cheat oneself. As with many comical films, there may be more here than meets the eye.

It may be particularly useful to the newcomer to I AM CURIOUS to remember that A: the director of this film, Vilgot Sjoman, was a student of Ingmar Bergman's, and B: Ingmar Bergman has a very high regard for Vilgot Sjoman's work.

...this film leans on humor as an anti-"Do your own thing" spoof film moreso than does, say, the excellent BLOW UP, the other anti-"Do Your Own Thing" film of the 60s ...

Scandalous as BLOW UP in many ways, this film chronicles a coming of age. DONT MISS IT. It is truly as valid in our own age as then.

The 60s didn't monopolize the phenomena peculiar to itself, to iself. It appears to have had a sturdy half-life that persists, in its effects, to our own day.

The main character is a twenty-four-year-old drama student. Her name is Lena. Not surprisingly, she is a left-winger in politics. She moves through phases. These are of sex, activism, yoga, vegetarianiasm, and non-violence. The director documents her gradual disillusionment. She learns of life this way; of the hip, the cool, the bourgeois, the conventional. Yet she does it with more humor than the photographer in the landmark Antonioni film, BLOW UP, does!

One scene in particualar seems to capture the humor and essence of the theme of the entire film. Lena is in the middle of a chat with a female friend. It is about politics. Wittily enough, the conversation changes abruptly. It turns into a conversation about masturbating with shower sprayers and vacuum cleaners(thanks for the DVD edition. The previously available, and shortened, VHS Hens Tooth Video edition (useful as it was) omitted a few scenes, like this. One was left augmenting the film with the Grove Press script. Not so with this DVD edition.)

I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW) was a controversial film in the 60s. It endured an obscenity trial here. The director was called in from Sweden to defend his piece.

When it was finally released it was a let down for some viewers. All expeted a sizzling sex film. Instead they got humor. It also featured anti-vietnam demonstrations. No doubt part some expected an anti-establishment film. The director had a different idea. He wanted to show Lena growing up, and learning about both sides of the coin, about different points of view. He ventures to show the follies of college-aged leftism, not just the pruderies and pigheadedness of right-wing fascism.

Lena gradually becomes some kind of enlightened , though she may resent it. She comes to see, no doubt, a few points of view besides her own, by the end of the film.

The movie itself was a milestone. It broke taboos. After I AM CURIOUS (YELLOW), the movies changed. Film actors took their clothes off more often in mainline Hollywood films. They had sex on the screen: so what. Is this necessarily a virtue ? Such a trend may only serve prurient interests and drives : even the most liberal among us must be honest enough, open-minded enough to admit that. Did this film do any more than THAT?

I think so.

I think it did do more. It broke more important taboos. IT SHOWED TO THE YOUNG THAT IT MAY NOT BE THE ESTABLISHMENT THAT NEEDS ALL THE EXAMINING. Would that things could be so simple!
Perhaps the generation of LSD suicides needed to become more introspective. They needed to examine themselves as much as they examined their 'leaders' and the bourgeois complacency around them.

This film helped to break a pervasive 60s assumption that new blood always knows all things. I began to understand why I never heard leftists discussing this film, in spite of its alleged slant. Why would a left-wing leader, say, recommend or discuss this film? A film that suggests young, college-aged leftists might challenge their own views (and by implication, conservative students, as well)? One might lose potential recruits for one's cause! and a chance to practice leadership skills with one's own set of young puppets...

Politics may change. The basic phases college students go through haven't changed. That is why I consdider this film important, even today. This is particularly so for younger college students. They are so ripe for the picking, recruiting by leftist campus 'leaders,' occasionally out for their own aggrandizement, like many are. Such students are often exposed to subtly demanding peers who require their 'involvement' and partnership in 'movements,' and 'fads/trends.'

This is done occasionally at the expense of the individuals' development. This is one of the messages of I AM CURIOUS (yellow)

Leaders young and old, of the left or of the right, have their own agendas. They can be selfish ones. There may be more important things for a young person to do. To each his own. 'People follow like sheep:' one of the important messages of this valuable, if humorous, highly entertaining and controversial film.

CAVEAT STUDENTI! Let the young beware. And don't miss this film.

(PS: for those curious: blue and yellow are references to the colors of the Swedish flag.)

Summary of I Am Curious... (I Am Curious Yellow / I Am Curious Blue Set) (The Criterion Collection)

It also became a envelope-pushing event in the history of sex in the cinema. A feisty, rather zaftig actress-activist named Lena Nyman played a radical activist named Lena Nyman who, in between interviewing her fellow Swedes about everything from gender inequities to the morality of vacationing in Franco's Spain, spent lots of raunchy time in bed (and elsewhere). The copious frontal nudity and a glimpse of oral-genital contact ensured an epic court battle in America, and I Am Curious Yellow became a must-see conversation piece.

Decades later, it all seems not only fresher than it did then but oddly tender, even sweet. Sjöman, 42 years old to Nyman's 22, cast himself as her lover (which he was) as well as her director, and the film is occasionally "interrupted" by its own filming. Sjöman/"Sjöman" has to watch Lena/"Lena" doing some very intimate things with costar Börje Ahlstedt. Börje is playing a car salesman, but also playing "himself" as an actor sometimes intriguing against his director with "Lena"--not "Lena the activist" but "Lena the actress," both of whom Lena the actress-for-real is playing. The Pirandellianism is witty, raw, and lingeringly ambiguous. And now DVD adds another layer if you happen to watch with the commentary track engaged and listen to the seventysomething Sjöman, still musing wryly on the radical fusion of film and life at whose creation he was present. --Richard T. Jameson