Valerie a týden divu

Plot synopsis:
Valerie [Jaroslava Schallerová] has just come of age with her first bleeding. Babischka [Helena Anyzová] says
that it's time to put away her magic earrings and attend to the
missionaries who are coming to town. Valerie, however, is more interested
in the performers who have arrived for Hedvica's wedding. As the
celebrators pass below her dining room window, Valerie sees a "monster," a
masked man whose face changes from human to a nosferatu-like vampire. Even
Babischka pales when she sets eyes on him.Now Valerie begins to see the vampire everywhere. He is the Bishop,
he is the Constable, he is her boyfriend Orlik's guardian, he is the
Weasel, he is Babischka's lover Richard. Babischka wishes to be young
again so that Richard will find her beautiful, so she signs away her house
(Valerie's inheritance) in return for a drink of Hedvica's blood on her
wedding night. Babischka then shows up as Valerie's second cousin Elsa,
young, beautiful, and vampire. When Valerie learns that the Vampire is
dying and must have blood, she steals a chicken and feeds him the blood
off her lips.A visiting priest, another of Babischka's lovers, tells
Valerie that her father was also Orlik's father, which greatly disturbs
Valerie to find that she and Orlik are brother and sister, but she is more
disturbed when the priest attempts to seduce her, so upset in fact that
she kills herself with her magic earrings. The priest then kills himself
but comes back to life. The priest convinces the town that Valerie
bewitched him, so the townsfolk tie Valerie to a stake and set her on
fire, but her magic earrings save her.Suddenly, Babischka is back. She reveals to Valerie a story about how
her lover Richard had two children with Valerie's mother (of which Valerie
is one, of course) just as a carriage drives up and Valerie's parents get
out. A hunter kills a weasel which has been eating the chickens, and much
merriment ensues as the whole town turns up to celebrate. The story ends
with Valerie asleep in a bed in the middle of the forest. [Synopsis by bj_kuehl]

Tags: fantasy, allegory, cult, flashback, psychedelic, sadist

Review:
A "coming of age" story like no other, this Czech Gothic fairytale is possibly the most lyrical film ever made.
Valerie, a 13 year old staying with her grandmother while her parents are away has her first menstruation, triggering a series of interlocking dreams about lustful vampires who prey upon her youth.
An aimless but fascinating surreal fantasy  a sort of adult-oriented version of 'Alice In Wonderland' with a distinctly Eastern European flavor  VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS was a revelation for me, and I am very glad I went the extra mile to acquire a copy of it on VHS.The narrative makes little sense and, like I said, it does not lead to anywhere in particular, but the film's trump card is the incredible (and often poetic) beauty of its images.
The film ostensibly deals with the sexual awakening of a teenage girl, though the way director Jaromil Jires goes about this is extremely complex yet effortlessly captivating, and very enjoyable to boot.
It takes in a variety of dazzling psycho-sexual concepts drawn from religion and mythological folklore which come off as both inextricably modern and deeply provocative still.The film features a number of sexual perversions throughout, which is pretty amazing when considering that the lead actress was only 13 years old at the time (though nothing too explicit is ever shown): she is involved in lesbianism, incestuous/Oedipal familial relationships, and is even subjected to an attempted rape by a young priest  apart from being shown in various states of undress!
In this way, it would seem to cater to the tastes of practically every broad-minded film-goer one can think of (be it art-house, horror or erotica), though it is arguable how well-known this film really is  which is a pity.The few elements we find here of the traditional horror film are worth expanding upon, however: we get a number of vampires (the leading member bears an unmistakable resemblance to the Max Schreck of NOSFERATU [1922]) who periodically revert to their formerly more human and youthful selves, if only to further disorientate Valerie and ensnare her in their volatile and greedy schemes.
Still, she manages to emerge unscathed from her every crisis, thanks to a special talisman (in the shape of a pair of earrings) and the help of her goofy but devoted brother/lover, who goes by the name of Eagle!Jaroslava Schallerova, who plays Valerie, is lovely and utterly charming throughout, striking a perfect balance between wide-eyed innocence and a curious sexual urge.
Photography, sets, costumes and make-up are all wonderful (if obviously done on a low budget) - and the accompanying choral music is beautiful indeed, almost ethereal.The by-now deleted Redemption PAL tape presented the film in a full-screen format (I'm not sure if this is the correct ratio or not); the print was far from pristine but perfectly acceptable for an obscure item such as this.
I wonder who owns the U.S. rights, as I would love to see it get a much-deserved renaissance on DVD.I cannot say whether VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS was actually a one-off for this Czech film-maker, as I know very little about his other work.
This movie by Jaromil Jires is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen, add to that a very dreamy atmosphere and a very theatrical plot concerning a little girl, her brother, her grandmother and a very strange priest.
It turns each second of this movie into a living masterpiece.I won't mention the plot, however I WILL mention the sheer beauty of 13-year-old Valerie.
Jaroslava Schallerovà, only 14 years old at the time, plays Valerie, a pretty young girl who lives with her grandmother in a beautiful yet antiseptic house.
These are a few words that can sum up Jaromil Jires' deliriously bizarre fairy tale "Valerie and her Week of Wonders".
Just like Richard Blackburn's sinister "Lemora, a Child's Tale of the Supernatural", "Valerie" is a 'coming of age' tale told through a monstrous metaphor: vampires, who prey on the young to drain their innocence.
Last but not least, Jires' excellent direction and Jan Curik's lush cinematography that highlights the film's "fever dream" tone help create this brilliant work of art that captures the essence of the ethereal and lyricism on celluloid unlike any other..
Valerie is living with her grandmother and experiencing menarche, which triggers a series of dreams (or is it reality?) involving a vampire (or is her father?), a potential suitor (or is it her brother?), a long-lost cousin (or is it her rejuvenated grandmother-turned-vampire?).
Jaromil Jires's decidedly dreamlike Czechoslovakian film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, takes place in the countryside, as Valerie visits her relatives at their turn-of-the-century estate, only to find that they are vampires, engaging in a sort of ecstatic summer orgy into which Valerie will be initiated.
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a deeply eccentric text, infusing a coming-of-age story with Edenic concepts of purity and lust, inclusion and banishment, into a sensuous tapestry in which nothing is as it seems.Written by Jires, Ester Krumbachova, and Vitezslav Nezval, the films brevity and its seductive mise-en-scene sumptuously photographed by Jan Curik, make the film seem almost an outlaw project, or an act of social criticism designed to "enforce atheism by embracing an anti-Catholic stance, particularly in relation to sexual morality.
What protects Valerie, above all other things, is her connection to nature, which preserves her position within the film as a force of hope within a crumbling family structure.In many ways Valerie and Her Week of Wonders can be read as a more sexually explicit vision of the coming-of-age narrative, centering on the freedom of youth, than its numerous American and British counterparts.
Watchable, at least once, for the waif-like beauty, Valerie, and her forays into a mystical, magical and surreal world, where corpses converse with the living, and brothers lust for their sisters..
Another great Czech new wave film that is both haunting and beautiful is "Valerie and her Week of Wonders" (what a week...
She's not even safe from the town priest.(surprise surprise) The film contains beautiful religious images, strange sexuality, incest, nudity and other crazy assorted weirdness.
This could possibly represent the wealth of parents who had to leave Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia due to restrictions made on expression.Valerie's 'week of wonder' is a fantasy; a dream that is out of the participants control.
One morning she tells her grandmother that she is no longer a girl and that with the onset of her period she has now become a woman and thus begins Valerie's surreal adventures in life, love, religion and just a little bit of horror.
Inspired by fairy-tales such as Alice in Wonderland and Little Red-Riding Hood, "Valerie and her Week of Wonders" is a surreal tale in which love, fear, sex and religion merge into one fantastic world: a disorienting dream, cajoled by priests, vampires, men and women alike, and blends elements of fantasy and horror films.Many writers have cited similarities between the film and the work of English writer Angela Carter, who had seen the film during its release in England.
This 1970 film from Czechoslovakia is a surrealistic movie that deals with a teenage girl bizarre dreams after reaching puberty.
"Valerie and her Week of Wonders" remains playfully surreal and suggestive from start to finish and the whole film is literally a spitfire of absorbing images, intriguing characters, dreamy music and hypnotizing sets & scenery.
The power of films like "Valerie and her Week of Wonders" lies within the fact that all the imagery and content can be interpreted in various ways, by different viewers, but also by one and the same viewer depending on his/her state of mind.
But all of this would be nothing without the amazing actress who plays Valerie; she exudes innocence, which is challenging in a movie which requires a 13-year old to be somewhat sexual (she's briefly naked, but it is done in a tasteful manner).If you like the surreal, this movie is an absolute treasure..
The nearest equivalent from the Czechoslovakian new wave being the Gothic horror-melodrama Morgiana (1972) which also shares a dark fairy-tale aesthetic and highly stylized surrealist approach to its period-set material.The first thing you will notice straight from the get-go with this one is that it is a very visually beautiful film indeed.
Her subsequent sexual awakening coincides with the arrival of a carnival and from here many strange fantastical things occur including magic earrings, vampires, a predatory priest and a boy who sends her magical letters.Jaroslava Schallerová in the role of Valerie is a revelation.
A pathfinder of Czechslovak NEW WAVE in the 60s, Czech filmmaker Jaromil Jires (1935-2001) kick-started the movement with his feature debut THE CRY (1963), and his third feature VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS, is probably his most well-known work, an adaptation from avant- garde writer Vítězslav Nezval's eponymous surrealistic novel, about a 13-year-old girl Valerie's (Schallerová, an ethereal nymph borne out of her screen debut) phantasmagorical experience happening around her after she has had her very first menstruation.Sandwiched between Vera Chytilova's DAISIES (1966) and Juraj Herz's MORGIANA (1972), Jires' concoction of fantasy and horror snappily juggles with the former's experimental whimsy and the latter's Gothic trope.
A bountiful of motifs are cooked together in this mash-up from scene to scene within its terse 73-minutes running time: sexual awakening, Electra complex, virgin worship, wedding and funeral, clergyman's unbridled carnal lust, lesbianism, sibling incest, witch-hunt, vampirism, shapeshifter and black magic.An overload of dreamlike eeriness polished by Jan Klusák and Lubos Fiser's quaintly pastoral soundtrack, what Valerie sees and what she dreams merge into the same universe.
It's one of those films that really challenge your perceptions that it may take more than one watch to uncover more, which is part of what makes the world in the film fascinating and adventurous because there are just so many things going on.The music score is just beautiful it's one of my favorite scores of all time, it's a very calming and mysterious melody which perfectly fits the film.I really like the locale and the effects they used which were all practical, this was done on a modest budget but it was just used well and right just further showing you can make more with little.
I really love the world that the film has constructed it's a bit reminiscent of Downworld in the TV show "The Odyssey" because its a very strange land as it seems like one that has no clear sense of time as we see most things from medieval, Victorian, or even a bit of the 1920's as we see some drives in a buggie not a carriage; so you never know where this is taking place almost like something out of a dream.
It's grounded in reality but at the same time it isn't, wonderful things happen but also bad things as well which makes the place and the movie itself unpredictable.The story as it a Brother Grimm or "Alice in Wonderland" like fantasy that tells of Valerie growing up and her misadventures in her hometown as just a lot of crazy crap is happening all around her, as we as some really really confusing family drama that really put the twists to soaps to shame.This film is really made more for the visuals and the visuals are just beautiful and fantastic there is just so much that is interesting and so much that might make you say "What the Frak?" From the beautiful images like seeing Valerie swimming in a giant sized fountain as the sun is shining making both the water and her radiant as well as her room which is sort of her private sanctuary.
a group of guys flogging themselves, it's just things you have to see to believe.In a way at times the movie is almost a Christian film as there are some allegories and symbols in places.
"Valerie and Her Week of Wonders" is much like if you'd told Ingmar Bergman to make a film about sex and puberty right after he finished making "The Seventh Sign"!
As eccentric as, say, Jodorowsky's work (The Holy Mountain in particular), Czechoslovakian director Jaromil Jires interweaves a tale of religion, lust, and power using semi-surreal imagery to tell a story of a young girl growing up into adulthood.Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a blissfully short film (clocking in at 77 minutes in my Blu-ray edition), and it mimics the abruptness of a dream once it gets too phantasmagorical.
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) ** (out of 4) Surreal Czechoslovakian film mixes horror, eroticism and fantasy.
The film tells the story of a young girl named Valerie who receives a magical pair of earrings, which allows her to see the world as it really is.
In any event, "Valerie" is one deeply symbolic, surrealistic ride indeed, with characters whose relationships keep changing (a friend becomes a brother, a grandmother becomes a cousin) and with the line between fantasy and reality constantly blurred.
"Valerie and Her Week of Wonders" is a wonderfully surreal and hallucinatory horror/fantasy tale made by Jaromil Jires.This poetic film looks like a curious mixture of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Nosferatu".The pubescent Valerie is awakened one day by a pasty-faced,Nosferatu-like vampire who steals her earrings(which,we later learn,are imbued with magical powers).She pursues him,but he manages to vanish into a crowd.She spots the vampire again later, feebly disguised behind a mouse-head mask,and points him out to her(alarmingly pale)grandmother.As it turns out,the earring thief has vampirized Valerie's grannie,along with much of the town,and furthermore has set up shop in the dark,cobwebby basement of Valerie's house!Matters aren't helped by the presence of a lecherous priest with an eye for Valerie,but things really come to a head when Val's young, pretty 'aunt' moves in and tries to take Valerie out of the picture.The aunt is in fact Val's vampirized grandmother looking to further the head vamp's nefarious aims.Luckily Valerie's one true love,a dashing young man,is there to help her escape her grandmother's clutches and defeat the vampires, which inspires a mass celebration among the townspeople,ending with them all surrounding Valerie as she climbs into an outdoor bed and goes to sleep.The film itself is loaded with incredibly dreamy atmosphere as it mixes perfectly fantasy with reality.The main actress Jaroslava Schallerova is stunningly beautiful.A must-see for fans of poetic horror.10 out of 10..
The Perils of Growing Up. Jaromil Jires tells in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders a story about the coming of age and sexual awareness.
She's an observer, she's a victim, especially of the local priest; but the story just breezes through her.However I wouldn't deter anyone from watching Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.
"Valerie and Her Week of Wonders" is one of the most visually stunning films that I have ever seen.
On the eve of her first menstruation, thirteen-year-old Valerie comes to view sexuality in many different ways.
Her father may or may not be a vampire that wants to take her energy, her grandmother is a sexual deviant that would sell Valerie to regain her youth, a visiting priest attempts to take advantage of her, and the man that loves her (possibly her brother) gives her pearl earrings to save her from harm.
Along the way, Valerie experiences sexual confusion that may or may not be a dream...Though the plot seems to make no sense, it really does when examined.
I believe that Valerie did want a relationship with this young man, but in her mind he became her brother so that she couldn't be persuaded into "sin."Like the fore mentioned, there are many areas of the film that are left without an explanation.
You know I looked at director Jaromil Jires's film from a different perspective, hoping to perhaps take an "outside the box" view regarding the bewildering madness which continues for 80 minutes.I felt that Valerie's situation was a thirteen year old, blossoming with curiosity about sex, in a sexually repressed, deeply religious peasant village.
Her one escape is the fantasy world of dreams/nightmares which unlock all the inner wonders and feelings brimming inside the young virgin, just having her first experience of adulthood through a period.
Another interesting aspect I noticed was the gloomy marriage of a peasant girl to a much older, wealthy farmer..perhaps this is another sad reality plaguing Valerie for I'm never sure, myself to be honest, if what we ever see ventures into reality(..that's what I love most about this film:the idea of not knowing if anything we see is actually real or all concocted through the dreams of a young or old woman looking back at what she would've desired and never ultimately received).Through the lens of director Jires, Jaroslava Schallerová as the heroine of the film, is shot seductively.
Despite having symbolism and much of it being a dream/fantasy of a adolescent girl it also had a storyline and an incredible fairy tale setting.Valerie and her Week of Wonders.
VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS is a hard film to rate, much less review.
The story itself is some sort of tripped out "coming-of-age" tale that is at times equally beautiful, confusing, and disturbing.
There are some stunning visuals, a strange/dreamy storyline, and the acting is decent overall.The plot revolves around Valerie who after having her first period at age 13, experiences a bunch of strange and dream-like encounters.
Valerie lives with her grandmother who is turned into a vampire by a Nosferatu-like character that is referred to as "the weasel", her friend/brother named Eagle wants to marry her, the local priest wants to bone her, her grandmother comes back as her second cousin to try to kill her, she has some sort of strange lesbionic relationship with a woman named Hedvica - and there's some weird stuff thrown in about magic earrings that I didn't fully get.Visually, VALERIE...is a strong film.