I am Curious (Film)

Bob Hope once described I Am Curious (Yellow) as the film that opened the floodgates to the pornography avalanche that swamped the US in the ensuing decades. Whether true or not, IAC(Y) is really quite tame & unerotic relative to what followed. This didn't stop Americans, right-wing Republicans aside, from flocking to see it in 1969 once the two-year ban on its US release was lifted. The "Banned in the USA" tag certainly boosted its sales. As a piece of cinematic art though, its a "dog's breakfast", a mishmash. In part its a film about a Swedish filmmaker (Sjöman) who makes a film about a filmmaker (Sjöman) & his interactions with the actress (Nyman) he is filming ... wheels within wheels sort of thing. At the same time Lena is a kind of sociological researcher getting a hands-on feel for Sweden's sexual & political pulse in the promiscuous sixties. Based on her empirical research she maintains a scrapbook in which she codifies all of her sexual experiences with men. There's a dream sequence in which she performs a "phallusotomy" on her chauvinistic lover, who (as if things weren't confused enough) is also her avowed class enemy! Later Lena & her boyfriend visit a VD clinic. In between the film takes on a documentary feel when Lena tops up her research by interviewing American black civil rights leader Martin Luther King (who just happens to be in Stockholm) & future Swedish prime minister Olof Palme. Its a very strange, portmanteau type of film.