Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — European Cinema
wmcclain — 3 years ago(April 03, 2023 01:01 AM)
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)
, directed by Jaromil Jireš.
I don't often venture into surreal Euro art films, but this Czech title is just too gorgeous to skip. At only 1h17m I can live with the weird-god-help-us plotlessness.
Surreal = "incidents which are dramatically symbolic, but which make little sense in terms of coherent plot".
This is part of a little genre of interesting films: the young girl's coming of age told as horror-fantasy inspired by dark fairy tales.
The Company of Wolves (1984)
and
Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
are other examples.
I didn't care to try to puzzle out the story (if there is one) but the imagery and fragments of plot strongly invoke the dream imagery of adolescence, those half-forgotten never-understood years when a new world is revealed, then taken away again.
A major attraction is Jaroslava Schallerová as the title character, her first film at age 13 and just beautiful in every way. I try not to feel too pervy when watching this but a girl's fantasy imagery is just
intimate
. We have brief nudity and erotica, but she and the film are appealing far beyond that. She is a strong character, coming into her powers.
Criterion Blu-ray with a lovely image.
The disc includes a nice isolated score by
The Valerie Project
, a US band. Described as "psychedelic folk", a lot of it sounds like art-rock of the early 1970s, say by Pink Floyd or King Crimson. You can listen online at their
website
.
Capsule film reviews:
Strange Picture Scroll -
Sophievirus — 3 years ago(April 03, 2023 02:24 AM)
a great film that i saw one year ago for the first time. it's probably the most tripped out fever-dreamlike vampire fairytale i could possibly wish for in the absence of LSD and Jaroslava Schallerová is really stunning in the lead role carrying the whole film on her shoulders. i especially love how this film is a perfect mashup of 2 other films i already absolutely adore: the Czech classic
Daisies
and Japanese horror
House
imo but with fewer jump scares and way more gothic, vampiric loveliness. so i was naturally starting to get warm with
Valerie
right away and i know will return to it again some time soon.
suck it.