CommentsXp
Best movie ever!
Grimossfer
Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%
Ortiz
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
Celia
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Cosmoeticadotcom
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 on screen 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.
whist
"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.
Daniel Karlsson
This film was probably inspired by Godard's Masculin, féminin and I urge you to see that film instead.The film has two strong elements and those are, (1) the realistic acting (2) the impressive, undeservedly good, photo. Apart from that, what strikes me most is the endless stream of silliness. Lena Nyman has to be most annoying actress in the world. She acts so stupid and with all the nudity in this film,...it's unattractive. Comparing to Godard's film, intellectuality has been replaced with stupidity. Without going too far on this subject, I would say that follows from the difference in ideals between the French and the Swedish society.A movie of its time, and place. 2/10.
jim riecken (youroldpaljim)
I would put this at the top of my list of films in the category of unwatchable trash! There are films that are bad, but the worst kind are the ones that are unwatchable but you are suppose to like them because they are supposed to be good for you! The sex sequences, so shocking in its day, couldn't even arouse a rabbit. The so called controversial politics is strictly high school sophomore amateur night Marxism. The film is self-consciously arty in the worst sense of the term. The photography is in a harsh grainy black and white. Some scenes are out of focus or taken from the wrong angle. Even the sound is bad! And some people call this art?