Nyman's character, also named Lena, lives with her father in a small apartment in Stockholm and is driven by a burning passion for social justice and a need to understand the world, people and relationships.

She walks around Stockholm and interviews people about social classes in society, conscientious objection, gender equality, and the morality of vacationing in Franco's Spain.

Through her father Lena meets the slick Bill (Börje in the original Swedish), who works at a menswear shop and voted for the Rightist Party.

Lena has strange dreams, in which she ties two teams of soccer players – she notes that they number 23 – to a tree, shoots Bill and cuts his penis off.

[7] The ruling was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union,[8] and although an appeals court eventually declared that the film was not obscene,[9] the ban was ultimately upheld with a split 4-3 vote.

[13] In April 1970, sheriff's deputies in Pensacola, Florida, seized prints of I Am Curious (Yellow), as well as Dracula (The Dirty Old Man), from the Ritz Theatre on N Tarragona St; the theater's manager was charged with "two counts of unlawful showing of an obscene film and maintaining a public nuisance".

Vincent Canby of The New York Times referred to it as a "Good, serious movie about a society in transition",[32] and Norman Mailer said he felt "like a better man" after having seen it.

[33] Rex Reed said the movie was "vile and disgusting" and Sjöman was "a very sick Swede with an overwhelming ego and a fondness for photographing pubic hair",[34] but Norman Mailer described it as "one of the most important pictures I have ever seen in my life".

[35] In the UK, Patrick Gibbs of The Daily Telegraph wrote that "there's not much for patrons in this cinema-verite material, presented in the Godard style as if it were holy writ.

"[37] Alexander Walker of the Evening Standard remarked that as a result of having been cut in the UK, it "will now never satisfy the curiosity of people who know it as the first Swedish film to show the sex act.

Every scene of that kind has been severely 'reduced' by our censor and we are left with a dull film of almost parochial impact about a girl public opinion-tester endlessly asking Swedes their views of class, colour, war and pacificism—oddly enough, not sex, unless you take a protest poster that reads 'COLOURED PEOPLE BE PREPARED—THE WHITES ARE STAGGERING' to fall into that category.

"[38] In 1974, when an uncut version of the film debuted in Australia, critic Colin Bennett of The Age remarked that "almost the only fascination now lies in the revelation of what was considered far too notorious to be imported into [Australia] a few short years ago", adding that "sociologically, this satirical stuff may have had more point in 1967 Sweden, and I suppose it does reveal a modicum about Scandinavian social attitudes.

"[39] In recent years, Yellow has received some reappraisal, thanks in part to Gary Giddins, who authored the 2003 essay accompanying the Criterion Collection DVD release, and a review by Nathan Southern on the All Movie Guide website.

Southern assesses the picture as "a droll and sophisticated comedy about the emotional, political, social, and sexual liberation of a young woman... a real original that has suffered from public incomprehension since its release and is crying out for reassessment and rediscovery".

[44] The eleventh studio album by the English post-punk band The Fall makes reference to the film in its title, I Am Kurious Oranj.