The first "Curious" (Yellow) was released in 1967 written and directed by Swedish director Vilgot Sjoman starring post-teen nymphette Lena Nyman who could heat up a pair of Swedish meatballs at her tender age faster then a microwave oven set on overload. Her sexually was subtle while her performance was that of hot lava pouring from a volcano. In reality she was a film student of her professor Vilgot, and she did have a curiosity about politics and social injustice. Vilgot was obviously enamoured with his star pupil so decided to make a film about her interests in politics and his own fascination with Nymans hymen. In the "Curious" storyline, Lena plays the part of...you guessed it, Lena! Vilgot was going for raw sensous reality as well as putting his pupil on a pedestal and preserving her posterior for posterity...and what a posterior it was.
"Yellow" as was "Blue" when it was released were banned in America being the red, white and blue prudes it has always been. World wide the film is still regarded as one of the most controversial films of it's time. It came to fruition during the stirrings of the sexual revolution and branded obscene and revolutionary. In fact, it is a delicious delving into the exploration of exploitation and spelunks into the politics of sexuality with explosive and explicit love scenes piloted by Lena Nyman whose persona was one of unchained sexuality that was similar to throwing a piece of raw meat into a lions cage...Lena however was the lioness devouring our own sense of sexuality and she swallowed us whole. This was a landmark film in Europe and eventually the United States, and the fact that it came out of 1960's Sweden made it even more erotic and exotic. After all, Sweden banned Donald Duck for years because he didn't wear pants!
Lena Nyman, who was 23 at the time of filming, gave her character, also named Lena, a fuel injected mixture of pure animal magnetism. Lena the Curious, lives in Stockholm with her father. She is curious about the world and politics and sex, a deadly combination for a 20-something, that fosters a burning desire to save the world by getting involved in social issues while simultaneously ends up sexually aroused with a bad case of "fire in the hole" She has a voracious appetite for older men and can proudly say she has let 23 of them go where no man has gone before...well before they entered her Swedish garden of Hedon. In between her sexual acrobatics she studies Nazi atrocities and begins a quest in the city to interview people about their feelings on gender equality, peace and morality. She has an aversion for Fascism and is on a quest to right the wrongs of the world, one bedmate at a time. She also of all things hates Generalissimo Francisco Franco for some reason. M
One day left wing Lena meets a right wing Swede named Borje. In time she discovers Borje has another woman on the side, so Lena leaves town on a bicycle to get away from the tawdry affair and begins to immerse herself in meditation and yoga! Her sexual apettite is now going unfed so I guess there is solace in meditation, but, why meditate when you can masturbate?
Borje tracks her down, and faces off with Lena, the peace activist, who is brandishing a double barreled shotgun..so much for pacifism. Borje unleashes gallons of Swedish charm so she not only drops her shotgun, but also her panties as together they have a romp under the cotton covers in the cabin she has rented for old times sake. In a classic "how to ruin the mood" moment, post-orgasm conversation leads to her questioning Borje about not only his kept woman, but, discovers he also as another woman tucked away in his carnal menagerie. He laughs and gets up to leave quickly, sexually satisfied, and Lena also satisified falls asleep naked after some of the best nymph lovemaking scenes ever filmed.
She falls into a dream state and dreams she captures two teams of soccer players and ties them to a tree, she then shoots Borje by firing two shotgun blasts below his belt. Yes Borje goes without his balls for the rest of the dream. Now...prepare yourselves, in the next dream sequence Martin Luther King drives up and admonishes her for her violence and she apologizes for not adhering to the mantra of non-violence. King leaves and she returns to Stockholm and tracks down Borje, and informs him that they both have contracted venereal disease.
The film now gets even more mondo strange when scenes now include the "Curious" film crew and the director Sjoman in arguably the strangest seque into reality on the silver screen. We realize now that this has all been a film after all but a very curious one to say the least, but, once again, it takes a sharp left turn without using a turn signal as Sjoman the actor as director fires up into an artistic rage as a jealous lover upset over her love affair with the actor who played Borje and their torrid love scenes that Sjoman himself directed! A clear cut case of directorial masturbation and voyeurism watching his real life lover Lena cavort on screen with a fictional love interest. Sjoman is the cuckold in his own film that he himself has now entered as a charcter! Curious or just confused?
They argue mercilessly and Lena returns the directors keys as he goes to meet with another new young nubile protegee of the cinematic arts in his film class. The film closes with a filmed segment of a poem read by Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Now that is not only a curious ending but downright freakish! When I first saw the film, (and later the sequel "Blue") I felt protective of the provocative and promiscuous Lena Nyman and the film character Lena the ball-buster. She had me by the balls as well and quite frankly, never let go.
Sadly, leaping Lena is no longer curious or alive. Born in 1944 as Lena Elisabet Nyman she died in 2011 after a long battle with cancer. After the Curious series (Yellow and Blue) she rocketed to Swedish stardom like a comet streaking across the celluloid sky starring in may European films and also had the good fortune to share the screen with Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann in Ingmar Bergman's "Autumn Sonata in 1978. Sadly, leaping Lena is no longer curious or alive. Born in 1944 as Lena Elisabet Nyman she died in 2011 after a long battle with cancer. Her sexuality portrayed on screen was that of a super woman and not a young innocent girl, and she drew you into the celluloid debauchery as you gladly stepped through her looking glass. her performance left me sexually spent, but damn, she did leave me infatuated, yes...curious? Not any longer.
Then there was Vladimir Nabokov's clit-lit literary foreplay foray into the promiscuous world of juvenile jailbait encounters of the third kind that was not just controverial as a book but when Stanley Kubrick who had spent numerous hours himself with jailbait prostitutes in Parisien bordellos that specialized in catering to that particular fetish turning fantasy into Alice in Wonderland reality. Lewis Carroll who wrote "Alice" also had a thing for his 12 year old female cousin and wrote the story for her as a love offering! I guess when he spoke of his mushroom growing larger he was using that as a euphemism for a fully erect penis, and when the mushroom made things smaller it was Carroll-speak for orgasm ejaculation and subsequent shrinkage of the male member. Curiouser and curiouser, yellow and blue!
This film was right up Kubricks fetish alley so he got a hold of the novels rights to produce the film version that turned into a turn on of a carnal carnival of forbidden love between a fourteen year old and an older man, both portrayed almost too convincingly by Sue Lyon and James Mason. I had read Lolita before I saw the film . Sue Lyon who was only 14 in 1962 at the time of filming was the sex dripping nymphette star of Kubricks no hold barred silver screen classic. The story is about a middle aged man who is absolutely obsessed with the young teen, who does her best to foster the feeling below his James Mason-Dixon belt line equator giving him hard-on hope that "his South will rise again" and penetrate virgin territory and gain ground. James Mason, fresh from his Journey to the Center of the Earth plays Humbert Humbert...imagine Marino Marino..never mind..back to our film...Lolita also stars Peter Sellers in a comic role as quirky Quilty. The role of Humbert's wife is magnificently portrayed as the betrayed spouse by Shelley Winters who lets face it...nobody wants to do...however, like Humbert, we all want a piece of Lolita and hell, who wouldn't want to be \cornered in Sue Lyons lion cage.
The film was controversy on viagara but the critics hailed it as a champion piece for the exploding Sixties sexual revolution that was storming the bastille of convention. The conservative right of course called it pornography..but Kubrick could care less. He knew it would catch on and it did. The revolution was on and Sue Lyon was leading the charge and it all came down to one thing...is that a Kubrick in your pants or are you just happy to see Lolita? Sue Lyons performance was fuel injected erotica and damn, you wanted to help her with her homework and take her to the prom! Mover over Humbert Humbert...Marino Marino is going to take Lolita to the prom!
Lena and Lolita where one thing, Therese and Isabelle were something else altogther. They came to sexual life in a 1966 French lesbian short novel written by Violette Leduc. It was eventually transformed into a film version called "Therese and Isabelle" I never read it until after the film was produced, then hungrily devoured page after page.
So what was this fascination with Lesbianism we seem to crave more than we crave banana splits? In the case of Therese and Isabelle it's the hard core reality of the situation of two adolescents who find sex and romance portrayed sensually in literature and is in fact based on the real life experiences of author Leduc who loved to fuck her room mate in Paris. It was an act reciprocated tit for tat so to speak.
Leduc experienced her first budding lesbian relationships in a boarding college at the end of WWI with a room mate. One night after hitting the books they decided to hit on each other and from there love grew like a mighty sexual redwood. She also engaged in a sexual affair with her lesbian music instructor who was conducting other lesbian concertos while make William No-Tell overtures to Luduc. The hymen symphonies conducted by the instructor, who was a vagina virtuoso, were apparently well tuned while her sexual performances were standing room only. In the end she was "outed" by the administration and admonished for her indiscretions. She was told to turn in her baton and hit the road. Imagine what would have happened to her in America's deep south bible belt? Burned at the redneck stake! Now if it took place in a fantasy booth in San Francisco's North Beach, I would have paid good money for that peep show.
Eventually Violette moved to Paris and worked as a telephone operator at Plon Publishers. It was here she showed promise as a writer and was encouraged by the editors to write. Her fist work was published by Albert Camus himself and she garnered praise from Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet. Her 1955 novel "Ravages" was considered one of the most sexually explicit literary works to date, especially the segment on lesbianism based on her own experiences so they were removed prior to publishing "Ravages" but later published seperately as "Therese and Isabelle" in 1966. Her next novel "Le Taxi" tackled the issue of incest between a brother and sister and once again while the critics raved...the censors raged. The climate was ripe in 1968 for a T & A production of T and I and that enviable task went to Radley Metzger who produced the film of adolescent lesbian love featuring actresses Essey Persson and Anna Gael.
In the plot, Therese is thrown into the pubic briarpatch of an all girls school where she meets Isabelle and soon they are under the covers of discovery copping jailbait feels after experiencing they had experienced brutal sex with older men and boys. So they do what comes naturally after such altercations. They become delicious lesbians much to the delight of an eager theater audience. But, in one of those get your mind out of the gutter 360 degre turn arounds, they find more than sex. They also find true love and understanding, which for the Sixties sexual revolution was revolting to the establishment of the hypocritical hymen and pubic pious who considered the subject matter pornographic and not romantic. The left wing, the liberals and the lesbian community however won the battle and the legions of lesbians were clitorious victorious, even though the film was banned in some cities in America where the right ring red white and blue were not curious yellow or blue for two love making adolescents who would gladly have invited Lolita to join them in a three- romp under the covers.
Yellow and Blue, Lolita, Therese and Isabelle. All were were pioneering females literary characters turned into cinematic heroines defining the sexual revolution by filmakers and actresses that broke on through to the other side of the looking glass of conformity. Underage sex, lesbianism, and multiple sex partners...the Sixties were about to explode with much more freedom of expression and free speech..along with a dose of free love...but the doors of sexual perception were already unlocked...thank you Sue Lyon for giving us Lolita, and Lena, we still blue and yellow curious. As for Therese and Isabelle..move over and save me spot in bed.