Wordiezett So much average

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Emil Bakkum The film "I am curious - blue" is the twin of "I am curious - yellow". In the film the producers even use this similarity between the two as an argument to recommend their acquisition ("Now also available in blue"). Since I already have reviewed the latter, the present comments can be succinct. Both films are made in the style of the nouvelle vague. This type of films appeared mainly in the roaring sixties and early seventies, launched by innovative producers. Both the blue and yellow version are political films, notably about Swedish life, and presented in the style of a documentary. Remember the wise words of the French writer Paulhan: "All I ask is that politicians change the world, and not also the truth". In fact the script is replete with bizarre arguments. One wonders what is meant to be satire and what not. Whereas the yellow version still contains a love story, of the leading woman Lena, the blue version is just a sequence of interviews. It addresses the then topics of interest: the inequality of income, nonviolent resistance, imprisonment, religion, and of course sexuality (including homosexual relations and sexual diseases). If men got pregnant, they would not think twins were so cute (joke, to keep this review entertaining). While in principle the reconsideration of the social norms was indeed befitting, "I am curious" follows the nasty New Left habit of abolishing all norms without replacement by new ones. The viewer is simply encouraged to experiment and discover his or her own boundaries (see the title). Evidently this is a poor recipe for success. Thus the "I am curious" couple tends to endorse stupidity, albeit presented in a tone of moral superiority. You do not have a dirty mind, but introspective pornographic moments. You are not sleeping around, but monogamically challenged. This qualifies the films as accurate images of the time, but also makes them out of date and somewhat unpleasant to watch. Moreover I find the blue version less funny than the yellow one. The reader may decide for him- or herself whether "I am curious" deserves a closer examination. Don't hesitate to leave a comment. I love it.

MisterWhiplash I Am Curious: Blue is the second version, almost interchangeable in the respects of a) certain scenes overlapping or just cut and pasted from version Yellow to version Blue and b) many similar themes and the same characters, following version Yellow. Both films look at Sweden in the late 1960s, and it's all filtered through the unique perspective of Vilgot Sjoman, who makes a cinematic smoothie, if you will, of documentary, 'making-the-movie' dramatic scenes, drama involving the character Lena, scientific type questions posed by Lena (in glasses of course!), and a good deal of sex and nudity to keep the art-houses lapping up at the mouth. It's also potentially one of the most pretentious art-house experiments ever concocted, but at the same time its own self-consciousness and "Hey, it's a movie about movies, so lets make this movie and then forget its a movie for a while until I, Sjoman, pop up on screen again" style has its advantages for the willing participant.Basically, there is no exact "plot" to either of the I Am Curious movies, and arguably even less so in Blue. While there is some connection to be made with Lena (Lena Nyman) and a married man, it's once again like Yellow mostly an amalgamation of interviews Lena does with everyday Swedes (topics this time range from wealth and jobs and income to religion to boys and girls at a dance) and Lena's wanderings in the Swedish countryside doing either her own kind of sociological experiments (or, as well, going skinny-dipping with a friend or not knowing she has scabies), or responding to Sjoman, who makes himself a character as a "director" of the project. It's hard to peg Sjoman, since he has created what is an alternate universe for himself to act in, which can be both fun and occasionally dull. Lena, however, is only somewhat talented as an actress, better at asking tough questions (I do love the scene with her and the Catholic stooge in the car) and taking her clothes off than giving a fully rounded performance.In general, from my point of view, Blue isn't quite as consistently fascinating as Yellow. It stands out fair enough as far as the parts go- everything involving the interviews or docu/drama type things like Lena bicycling the opposite way of protesters is at least captivating and at most some of the best stuff of either movies- but on the whole its experimental style doesn't flow quite as well. Yet I still recommend it because it's attached to the Yellow part - the only movie that comes in two versions! Sort of.

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.

zetes Looking at the number of imdb voters for both the I Am Curious films, it seems that few who watch the first end up watching the second (there are 194 votes for Yellow, and 46 for Blue). That's not surprising. Four hours of near-randomness is surely a bit difficult to sit through. And the four hours provide limited rewards. Yet, as one of the few who actually did finish both films, I hardly feel unrewarded. In fact, I think, having seen it all, the sum is greater than the parts. Sjöman does present a kaleidoscope of emotion and thoughts, all very fragmentary, of course, but the fragments are currently drifting around in my mind. I Am Curious might not be a ton of fun to sit through, but I think the films will be a part of me for longer than I might have originally guessed. As a closing note, I must say that the films' lead actress, Lena Nyman, gives an extraordinary performance, which is another aspect that isn't very obvious if you've just seen Yellow. She runs the entire gamut of emotion. As an actress who is certainly being horribly objectified by her director, she ends up coming out on top of it. If there's one thing I'll take out of the films, it's the sight of her dark, sad, curious gaze. She went on to better things, for example, Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata. Bergman surely realized her talent. I don't remember much in that film besides the two lead performances, who, even if there were a thousand other talented performers in it, would have drawn every ounce of attention towards themselves. I'll have to check it out a second time some day to find Nyman. 7/10.