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Drama

I Am Curious (Blue)

- Look who's flying into the blue!

The same movie with the same characters, cast and crew as I am Curious (Yellow), but with some different scenes and a different political slant. The political focus in Blue is personal relationships, religion, prisons and sex. Blue omits much of the class consciousness and non-violence interviews of the first version. Yellow and Blue are the colors of the Swedish flag.

Release Date : 1968-03-11

Language :Swedish

Adult : false

Status : Released

Production Company : Sandrews

Production Country : Sweden

Alternative Titles :

Cast

Maj Hultén

Character Name : Doktor

Original Name : Maj Hultén

Gender : Male

Vilgot Sjöman

Character Name : Vilgot Sjöman

Original Name : Vilgot Sjöman

Gender : Male

Lena Nyman

Character Name : Anna Lena Lisabet Nyman / Lena

Original Name : Lena Nyman

Gender : Female

Börje Ahlstedt

Character Name : Börje

Original Name : Börje Ahlstedt

Gender : Male

Sonja Lindgren

Character Name : Sonja Lindgren

Original Name : Sonja Lindgren

Gender : Female

Bertil Wikström

Character Name : Bertil Wikström

Original Name : Bertil Wikström

Gender : Male

Gunnel Broström

Character Name :

Original Name : Gunnel Broström

Gender : Female

Hans Hellberg

Character Name : Hasse

Original Name : Hans Hellberg

Gender : Male

Bim Warne

Character Name : Hasse's Girlfriend

Original Name : Bim Warne

Gender : Male

Peter Lindgren

Character Name : Lena's Father

Original Name : Peter Lindgren

Gender : Male

Gudrun Östbye

Character Name : Lena's Mother

Original Name : Gudrun Östbye

Gender : Male

Ulla Lyttkens

Character Name : Lena's Friend

Original Name : Ulla Lyttkens

Gender : Male

Magnus Nilsson

Character Name :

Original Name : Magnus Nilsson

Gender : Male

Gun Jönsson

Character Name : Woman

Original Name : Gun Jönsson

Gender : Female

Pierre Fränckel

Character Name : Man

Original Name : Pierre Fränckel

Gender : Male

Hanne Sandemose

Character Name : Woman

Original Name : Hanne Sandemose

Gender : Male

Frej Lindqvist

Character Name :

Original Name : Frej Lindqvist

Gender : Male

Marie Göranzon

Character Name : Marie

Original Name : Marie Göranzon

Gender : Female

Helle Sandemose

Character Name :

Original Name : Helle Sandemose

Gender : Male

Hagge Geigert

Character Name : Entertainer

Original Name : Hagge Geigert

Gender : Male

Bo Holmström

Character Name : TV-reporter

Original Name : Bo Holmström

Gender : Male

Reviews

C

CRCulver

@CRCulver

2021-06-23

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.