I Am Curious (Yellow)

In the 1960s Sweden underwent an enormous social upheaval, which brought it from a rather rigidly stratified and staid society, which cinephiles might have seen in Ingmar Bergman's earliest films, to a place where the old sexual taboos collapsed and angry class war broke out just like in some other Western European countries. The Swedish filmmaker Vilgot Sjöman decided to reflect those changing mores (and possibly spur some further more-changing himself) with his pseudo-documentary project I AM CURIOUS. He developed a script through a great deal of improvisation and then shot enough footage to release it as two films: "Yellow" in 1967, and "Blue" the following year (these titles refer to the colours of the Swedish flag). This review treats both of them.

The main actress of these films was 22 year-old Lena Nyman who plays... Lena Nyman, a 22 year-old drama student already well into sexual exploration and political commitment. From the home she shares with her alcoholic father, she runs what she calls the Nyman Institute, keeping an enormous collection of files and wandering around Sweden with a microphone to record the reactions of Swedes to provocative questions like "Does Sweden have a class system?" and (to holidaymakers returning from fascist Spain) "What do you think about Franco?". She has tumultuous relationships, mainly sexual, with suave yuppie Börje (Börje Ahlstedt) and idealistic bohemian Hasse (Hans Hellberg). The films have another layer, however, where we see Vilgot Sjöman coaching his actors and establishing a sexual relationship with his lead actress -- but even this layer is fictional. One really admires everyone, director and his actors alike, for being able to play fictional versions of themselves at two different levels.

The two films have a yin-yang relationship, covering roughly the same themes but in different proportions. Yellow is more about political engagement and non-violence in the context of the Cold War, and it attacks the hypocrisy of the Swedish left (which had become entrenched and no longer a force for social change) and the monarchy. That film is set mainly in Stockholm and deals with Lena's home life. Blue, on the other hand, explores the themes of religion and the prison system, and more of it is set in the countryside where we hear some of the attitudes of rural Sweden as opposed to the capital.

Upon their release, these films (especially Yellow) were attacked as pornography, and Sjöman as a letch (even though it was the real-life Nyman's idea that there be a subplot where the director seduces his lead actress). However, the sex and nudity here is not titillating at all, rather it is simply one of the many sociocultural themes that Sjöman wanted to present and as unsexy as any real documentary. Furthermore, Sjöman was really no letch at all - among countercultural artists, he may have been ahead of his time in confronting the possibility that the new permissiveness wasn't just female liberation, it was also men finding it easier to coerce women into sex by accusing them of being uptight if they didn't put out, something which didn't occur to many 1960s idealists until the next decade. Another way in which Sjöman critically examines the New Left is by charting how those who preach non-violence could be very cruel in their interpersonal relationships with friends and family.

I had seen only Yellow a few times and was prepared to consider this only a four-star deal, highly interesting as documentary material about 1960s Sweden, but missing something that truly moved me. However, getting a DVD set and finally seeing Blue provided that moving experience; it is quite impressive how Sjöman made the two films interlock with just enough overlap to make it a convincing whole. There's also some latent humour that becomes clear only on seeing both.

I grew up at a time when we were all experiencing things for the first time. We had heard about this film for a while and thought it would be interesting to see it. We were a mixed group and we guys were a little concerned about how the girls would react. As it turns out, the movie was more intellectually challenging than we had anticipated. We had a nice discussion at a coffee house afterwards. We were a little bit of an artsy bunch anyway. The nudity and sex weren't what we talked about (although it was a bit of an elephant in the room). We were trying to get a handle on what this girl was hoping for in life; what did she want from the world. I'm hoping to see this again soon and perhaps I'll do a little specific revision on the film. It certainly was news in the day. I found it bleak and rather depressing.

I am Curious (Yellow) (a film, in near Seussical rhyme, is said right at the start to be available in two versions, Yellow and Blue) was one of those big art-house hits that first was a major sensation in Sweden then a big scandal/cause-celebre in the United States when the one print was held by customs and it went all the way to the Supreme Court. What's potent in the picture today is not so much what might offend by way of what's revealed in the sex or nudity- the director/"actor" Vilgot Sjoman films the various scenes in such a way that there is an abundance of flesh and genitalia and the occasional graphic bit but it's always more-so an intellectual expression than very lust-like- but the daring of the attempt at a pure 'metafilm' while at the same time making a true statement on the state of affairs in Sweden. Who knew such things in a generally peaceful country (i.e. usually neutral in foreign affairs and wars) could be so heated-up politically? At least, that's part of Sjoman's aim here.

Like a filmmaker such as Dusan Makavajev with some of his works like W.R. (if not as surreal and deranged) or to a slightly lesser extent Bertolucci, Sjoman is out to mix politics and sex (mostly politics and social strata) around in the midst of also making it a comment on embodying a character in a film. The two characters, Lena and Borje, have a hot-cold relationship in the story of the film, where Lena is a "curious" socialist-wannabe who demonstrates in the street for nonviolence and 'trains' sort of in a cabin in the woods to become a fully functioning one, while at the same time maybe too curious about her car salesman boyfriend. And as this is going on, which is by itself enough for one movie, Sjoman inserts himself and his crew from time to time as they are making this story on film (there's even a great bit midway through where, as if at a rock concert, title cards fill in during a break in shooting who the crew are, negating having to use end credits!) Then with this there's a whole other dynamic as Sjoman gives an actual performance, not just a "hey, I'm the director playing the director" bit.

At first, one might not get this structure and that I am Curious (Yellow) is just a film where Lena is a documentary interviewer asking subjects about their thoughts on class, socialism, Spain and Franco, and once in a while we see Lena's father or Bjore. But Sjoman does something interesting: the structure is so slippery as the viewer one has to stay on toes; it's impressive that so many years on a picture can surprise with not being afraid to mix dramatic narrative, documentary, film-within-a-film, and even a serious interview with Martin Luther King, who also acts as a quasi-guru for Lena. It might not always be completely coherent analysis politically, but it doesn't feel cheating or even with much of a satirical agenda like in a Godard picture; the satire Sjoman is after is akin to a Godard but on a whole other wavelength. His anarchy is playful but not completely loaded with semantics or tricks that could put off the less initiated viewer.

If I Am Curious (Yellow) stands up as an intellectual enterprise and a full-blown trip into exploring sex in a manner that was and is captivating for how much is shown and how comfortable it all seems to be for the actors, it isn't entirely successful, I think, as an emotional experience. Where Bergman had it down to a T with making a purely emotional film with deconstruction tendencies, Sjoman is more apt at connecting with specific ideas while not actually directing always very well when it comes time to do big or subtle scenes with the actors. Occasionally it works if only for the actors, Lena Nyman (mostly spectacular here in a performance that asks of her to make an ambitious but confused kid into someone sympathetic and vulnerable even) and Borje Ahlstedt (a great realistic counterpoint to the volatile Lena), but some 40 years later its hard to completely connect with everything that happens in the inner-film of Lena and Borje since (perhaps intentionally) Sjoman fills it up with clichés (Borje has a girlfriend and kid, will he leave her, how will Lena reconcile her father) and a heavy-handed narration from his starlet of sorts.

And yet, for whatever faults Sjoman may have, ironically considering he means it to be a comment on itself, I Am Curious (Yellow) holds up beautifully as an artistic experiment in testing the waters of what could be done in Swedish cinema, or testing what couldn't be and bending it for provocative and comedic usage. I'd even go as far as to say it's influential, and has probably been copied or imitated in more ways than one due to it being such a cult phenomenon at its time (a specific technique used, with the film rewinding towards the end, is echoed in poorer usage in Funny Games), and should be seen by anyone looking into getting into avant-garde or meta-film-making. If it's not quite as outstanding an artistic leap as W.R. or Last Tango, it's close behind.

It is not the bad art film I expected. In fact, it left me with the impression that lots of people could relate to it these days (the question of obesity is treated interestingly even if it is only in an impressionist way). The politics are not that bad either - but someone brought up in a conservative environment may think it's strange or dated. It is not also the `socialist' film I thought it would be also. It ends with a crew member singing `freedom is not easy'. I kept thinking that this is the main idea of the film: freedom is not anarchy. Freedom is a situation in which you can do what you want to do if the other with whom you are expressing it wants the same freedom. If not, then problems arise. As for the claims of being pornographic, I don't get it. If seeing people naked is bad - while killing people in wars is ok - then I really do not get it. At the individual level, the film is more about the struggles of a young woman discovering moral freedom. She tries to express it with free sex but finds herself enmeshed in jealousy at the same time. An interesting movie that merits, at least for me, its cult status.

"Jag är nyfiken – Yellow" is a lot of fun. Like at least one other reviewer, I was, on numerous occasions, laughing out loud. Yellow is energetic, playful, self-aware, explorative. Don't expect Bergman here. This movie is about a youth in the early- to mid-60s in Sweden and about the issues, read *contradictions*, that the nation and the world were facing. At times Yellow appears to be an earnest social-political documentary, with Lena, the main character, and others interviewing both common people and politicians (e.g. Olaf Palme at home). At other times, Yellow seems to parody this kind of documentary. All the while, Yellow acts as a personal documentary exploring Lena's life - her home life, her loves, her political views, her view of herself. She is a complete person – complex, flawed, contradictory, happy, sad, curious. And placed over all of this is the wonderful additional dimension of the director, Sjöman, and his crew documenting themselves documenting Lena. It is this that, for me, really gives Yellow wings. Not only do they suddenly appear at some very funny times and in some funny ways, reminding the viewer that this is fiction and artifice, but their presence is itself another layer of the film; they are filming themselves filming themselves. I am reminded of a Bjork music video with this same quality – a music video about the making of a music video, ad infinitum, with each iteration getting weirder and more cartoonish. I think Sjöman may have had something similar in mind. While "Jag är nyfiken – Yellow" may not be everyone's cup of tea, it is certainly intelligent, witty, refreshing, ebullient, and authentic.