I Am Curious (Blue)

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...