2/5 Another one of those "60's movies" that doesn't pass the test of time
  by Bob - that guy from No Where (The Middle of No Where)
I remember hearing people talking about this movie and I could only imagine what kind of lurid and terrible acts were shown in the movie. I was surprised by what a boring story it turned out to be. There really is no point in watching this beyond a time capsule of the 60's sociopolitical scene. The first hour is a rather dry docudrama in a faux-cinema verite style about the class system that exist(ed) in Sweden. The second half is mostly about Women's Rights and the point of controversy sex scenes are there to show case the gender based power struggles in society rather than as porn. Overall a rather silly and rambling movie, the Pacifist Army Training bit is pure Monty Python - I kept expecting to see John Cleese pop up with his "and now for something completely different" line.

3/5 Culturally Significant, But There's Little Else Here
  by Joshua Miller (Coeur d'Alene,ID)
Vilgot Sjöman's I Am Curious: Yellow was seized by U.S. customs when it was brought to the states and a court battle ensued over whether the film was obscene or not. This meant free publicity for the film and it ended up being the highest grossing foreign film in the U.S. until the `90s. Despite the controversy and box-office earnings, many people felt it was a pretentious bore, hardly worth the controversy it stirred up. Even critics weren't very generous in regards to it, with Roger Ebert giving it one star.

This Criterion Collection release features both I Am Curious: Yellow and its little-seen semi-sequel I Am Curious: Blue. Both are presented with flawless picture and sound and include great special features like trial transcripts, an introduction by Sjöman, and a brief history of the "Yellow" film. Now: about the movies themselves.

YELLOW:
We are introduced immediately to drama student Lena Nyman, age 22 and director Vilgot Sjöman, age 42. The film goes from there in an unconventional way combining a loose narrative with a pseudo-behind the scenes storyline. Lena walks around Sweden asking citizens if they feel a class system exists in their country. When Lena sees Vilgot interviewing Martin Luther King, Jr. she becomes interested in nonviolent protest. She begins actively protesting various political issues, particularly the Vietnam War. But it is Lena's sexual awakening that she experiences with Börje that forms the core of the film.

There is certainly an element of absurdity and tongue-in-cheek humor in the film. A sign appears in the film reading: "Board of Censors. Meeting Censored." Furthermore, there's a scene where Lena struggles to film a scene of her doing yoga, so Vilgot and the entire film crew demonstrated its ease. The film is fully aware of these little absurdities, but I'm not sure the U.S. censors were.

As far as the film being a tedious bore, I was personally never bored by it...However I wasn't particularly interested in all of it either, especially when trying to piece together its purpose. It's certainly not "one of the best films ever made," as Norman Mailer asserted. As for it being pretentious, I only found it pretentious while watching it as I couldn't see it's important, but once it was over the fact that it WAS important became clear.

While the sex scenes in the film are pretty tame, the nudity in the film pushed the boundaries of what exactly you could show. The nudity is more graphic than what you see in most mainstream American movies today and its clear why it shocked people in 1967. This is what makes I Am Curious: Yellow culturally significant. Sjöman's frank handling of sex and full-frontal nudity changed the entire landscape of American cinema (even bolder an accomplishment, being it's a Swedish film). The film's politics are not what people take away from it and they are, in my eyes, irrelevant to the film's story. Lena's interest in politics seem symbolic of her rebellious attitude toward sexual matters and seemingly serves as a way to add depth to the character of a young girl breaking from conventions in a time of both political and sexual liberation. Whether this was Sjöman's intent or not, this is the impression I was left with.

BLUE:
This film contradicts most of what I just wrote. This film works as the political counterpart to "Yellow." There is sex in "Blue," but the focus is more on political issues at a time where the political climate was changing throughout the world.

In "Blue," Lena and Vilgot discuss making the film and Vilgot informs Börje he'll be doing "a love scene with consequences" with Lena. Later, Lena continues asking people about a possible class system in Sweden. Soon, her political endeavors have expanded to issues like the separation of church and state and the prison system. Still, the production of the film occasionally interrupts the actual film.

This film has a more story-like structure than its predecessor, as well as a more movie-like feel to it overall. Though, like "Yellow," "Blue" does not have much of a plot itself.

"Blue" is neither a sequel nor a mere retread of "Yellow." Basically, the two films seem like the result of two writers simultaneously writing a script based on the same idea. Both films differ from each other in some way, but basically follow the same concept. The only purely static characteristic of the two films is Sjöman's blatantly apparent adoration for Lena.

This film's biggest accomplishment is the fact that it serves as a visual record of the change in attitudes that occurred in the late `60s concerning sex, religion, and tradition.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
The few people who actually watched both films seem to agree that "Blue" is the better of the two and to be honest, it probably is. It's the more entertaining one (neither can really be defined as entertaining though), but I personally "enjoyed" "Yellow" more. This may have to do with the formula growing repetitive to me while watching "Blue." These films are not for everyone and I don't think I'll ever be watching them again, but both are culturally significant for different reasons and should be seen by those that care. If you don't, it's best you just find something else.

YELLOW: C+
BLUE: C+

2/5 So-so
  by Cosmoetica (New York, USA)
The films are based upon the two colors of the Swedish flag- a scheme that a quarter century later Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski would use to far greater effect with his Three Colors trilogy based upon the colors of the French flag. Neither of Sjöman's films are a good film, although Blue is better, for it has a bit better character arc, is less self-conscious, more meditative, and is fourteen minutes shorter (107 vs. 121), but neither are outright horrible films- merely dull and, with time's leveling, pointless exercises in puerile political masturbation. Blue does reuse some scenes from Yellow- such as scenes at a car dealership and a sex clinic. The films just seem sort of pointless all these years later. In retail language, they had a very short shelf life. Artistically, they are Ingmar Bergman on a really bad day, although Bergman was Sjöman's filmic idol, and politically they are about as deep as a thimble, larded with the naïve Left Wing tripe that the 1960s overdosed on, in reaction to the dying Right Wing Colonialist culture that arose for a last time after the Second World War. That Sjöman was 42 years old when he made these lightweight films is the only thing surprising because their ranting is more in line with a teenager's to their parent, when they are not allowed to do something destructive.
The two films follow the same tale, from slightly different perspectives. The putative lead character in both, Lena (Anna Lena Lisabet Nyman), is a 22 year old drama student sleeping with the 42 year old filmmaker Sjöman. The film is semi-documentary, and yet the camera also goes behind the scenes of the making of the film within the film, as well as ostensibly following Lena and other characters, like her onscreen and offscreen lover Börje (Börje Ahlstedt) in places where it could not go, but the viewer is asked to believe unquestioningly. Of course, this mushes up the real, the `real', and the staged, but not in a good nor profound way, and since none of the characters are deep nor well drawn, a viewer really has no interest in sniffing out which level is which, assuming that the levels confuse any viewers of intelligence....Like Bernardo Bertolucci's lame Last Tango In Paris, a few years later, neither of the I Am Curious films have relevance for anyone outside of their generation, which is a surefire marker that the art is bad. The acting is uniformly atrocious- Nyman later had a small role in Ingmar Bergman's 1978 Autumn Sonata, as the spastic daughter, but then faded from film history. Her co-stars were even less successful, and the I Am Curious films deserved their oblivion, for the years' passage has seen what at least seemed bold and innovative get pared down to dull and pretentious. Both films end abruptly, with no power nor insight, and if done to give verisimilitude to their `reality', it seems a waste, for no one really can buy into what either film is selling- just as their self-conscious tv-style hucksterism seems aimed at children, not adults.
Vilgot Sjöman may have made some good or even great films before or after these, but these are a waste of most viewers' time, and do not even hold the historical power that the Up films from Britain do, for those films are real documentaries, while these are mere fantasies of a Utopia that never was, and could never be- as evidence by Lena's simpleminded anti-education raps. Thus leveled, time seeks a new Ozymandias.


5/5 Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe
  by Timothy J. Smith (Burdett, New York USA)
I'm surprised - after all this time - to see this movie considered for its sexual content, which is quite tame, and, more importantly, quite relevant to the stories told. This is the best Goddard film ever made, except possibly "The Outsiders" by the man himself. combining fiction, mocumentary and documentary in a dialectic dissection of the 60's these films are a dynamic time capsule, showing us far more about the times and the politics than any spot of frontal nudity could ever accomplish. The central character's strength of character manages to carry the films quite well, and the director's commentary is largely helpful as well. I watched these because I hadn't seen them when they came out - though I could have - and felt I owed it to myself to see what the fuss was about. Once engaged with the films, however, I found myself in an altogether different sort of film than one designed for sexual controversy. If only films of today spent as much energy on politics, questions, and social commentary! These films are classics. The editing is a bit choppy, and the artifice a bit too self-conscious to be seamless, but I still give it a 5 star rating, which I don't like to do very often.

2/5 Iam curious yellow/blue
  by scott head (Detroit,Mi)
watching these 2 movies is like throwing away 4 hours of your life. Very tedious to watch, jumps all over the place, this girl gets naked at the drop of a hat, its a hodgepodge of nothing. The only good thing is seeing the late 60's isms and the interviews with Dr.M.L.King.