I Am Curious (Yellow)

This film was released in the year I was born, so now almost sixty years later it’s hardly surprising that it has lost much of it’s punch. It is, however, still an entertaining enterprise that marries the factual and the fictional in a fashion that isn’t always that easy to distinguish. With a solid effort underpinning it all from Lena Nyman this presents us with an interesting exposé on socialist idealism and sexual libertarianism. “Lena” is the sort of have your cake and eat it sort of gal (yes, I did write “cake”). She sees no point in just talking about freedoms, she wants to experience them. She wants to document them and she’s quite capable of swinging her wrecking ball into any relationships that get in her way. “Börje” (Börje Ahlstedt) is living with “Marie” (Marie Göranzon) and their child but is soon straying regularly with this temperamental women. What might come of that tempestuous romance? Meantime, this entire plot is playing out as a sub-plot to a movie being made about these self same characters, under the direction of “Vilgot” (the real auteur Vilgot Sjöman) so we frequently dart about between what is real in the film and what is a film of what purports to be real. There’s no doubt the political elements have become tired, especially if you were never on the left to start with, but to see the Swedes engage in anti Vietnam protests, and to talk about their government’s proposed strategy of peaceful, non-violent, protests in the event that they were ever occupied does raise a smile. So do some of the latter film techniques that would make today’s intimacy co-ordinators wince as they reach for the Vaseline tub! There is something intangibly innovative about this film. At times it follows more traditional plot lines: it’s a drama, a comedy and a romance and then it goes of on tangents that ensure we have our wits about us - and yes, there were times when I hadn’t a clue. There is quite a bit of natural nudity and a few sex scenes, but nothing that could even vaguely cause offence especially as their love-making could hardly have looked less plausible had they been in different rooms. It’s a film well worth a watch, but time hasn’t been so kind to it.