A film from Czechoslovakia and based off the 1932 novel by Vítezslav Nezval, a story detailing the dream a 13 year old girl named Valerie is having at the same time she is going through her first menstruation. Director Jaromil Jires delivers a surreal, dream-like movie with amazing sound and vivid, lasting visuals. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is AliceAlice reviews in WonderlandWonderland reviews meets Emmanuelle; a sensory feast detailing a young woman’s sexual awakening.

Filmed in and around beautiful South Bohemia, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is mostly set in Prague in what seems to be either medieval or turn of the century time period. Jaromil takes advantage of the GothicGothic reviews village-scape and creates some over-the-top set pieces, lavish costumes and films in vibrant, saturated colors. The beginning of the film follows Valerie, played by the enticing Jaroslava Schallerová, as she explores her dreamland and interacts with the characters within it with wide-eyed wonder and curiosity. While a lot of the film is up to the viewer to interpret if they choose to, the crux of the story centers around Valerie and a pair of magic earrings that have been stolen from her by her ‘brother’. These magic earrings protect Valerie and keep her (and others if needed) from dying. Valerie lives with her religious, rosary carrying grandmother (Helena Anýzová) and as the dream starts, has just found out that a troupe of actors will be arriving in town to perform for the wedding of a local girl, as well as a missionary who is returning from abroad. It is during the grand entrance of the actors, that Valerie first sees the shape-shifting vampire. He is able to change his face from a NosferatuNosferatu reviews-ish type monster to someone else entirely. Throughout the film, this vampire appears as many different people from the priest, the town constable and even her grandmother’s lover. These multi-roles, or the duality demonstrated by these characters are prevalent throughout the film. Pious becomes degenerate, scary becomes pathetic, old becomes young.

Valerie is discovering, as we all do at some point, that adults are not infallible and can be wrought with weaknesses and prone to hypocritical tendencies. This film demonstrates this on multiple occasions, including the righteous grandmother who Valerie later sees in a state of sexual frustration, flagellating herself at the feet of a degenerate missionary. This is also the same loving grandmother who will later fore-go Valerie’s inheritance and willingly succumb to becoming a vampire just to have her youth back. Then there is missionary who talks about the good he is doing in third world countries, yet later tries to rape Valerie in her bedroom and make you question exactly what he was doing with those impoverished children he was mentoring abroad. Valerie, in her awakening, is seeing that people all wear masks to varying degrees, people of power will often use that power to satisfy needs, regardless if those needs go against the very things they stand for. In the process, she also finds that the power she wields as a young, beautiful woman is a mighty, mighty powerful thing indeed. All of this is presented in a somewhat dis-jointed fashion and can be hard to follow what is actually going on scene to scene, but Jan Curík’s beautiful cinematography paired with the music from award winning composer, Lubos Fiser, help to create some memorable scenes in this Gothic fairytale of Valerie’s. When Jaromil, Jan and Lubos hit the mark, it is a bulls-eye. With fantastic, bright scenes around the Bohemian countryside and dank, depraved underground lairs full of fog, candles and cobwebs. Scenes that include the spinning gears in a chicken house, water in a fountain bursting into flames while being whipped by a vampire or a chilling scene of a priest with a jet black face and needle sharp teeth, delivering an extremely creepy sermon to a group of young virgins.

Being that this is a dream, the film is stuffed with symbolism and at times blends fantasy with a possible reality. The drops of blood falling on a snow-white daisy or Valerie’s bedroom being a bright white, are obvious symbols that are easy to grasp and understand. Others, as in the case of some of the people Valerie runs into in her dream-world, are up for interpretation and discussion. Characters can take on multiple roles, or even morph into completely different people which opens up a lot of topics for some to decipher and also leads to some incestuous scenarios. In the beginning it is not apparent if Valerie is aware of the fact she is dreaming, as in most dreams, things that are not believable while awake (vampires, magic earrings), but are taken as matter-of-fact when presented to her in her dream. But as the film progresses, Valerie finds the kind of confidence that one may find once they come to a realization that they are in a nightmare, and are in complete control over it. She begins to manipulate the characters, and even mocks them in some instances.

Trying to dissect any of this can lead to some interesting observations and theories, but it also brings up a question; What happened to Valerie before she went to sleep that night? Are all of the characters in this dream representing a cumulation of actual people and events? Or have they all been fabricated? This is another one of the many reasons to watch this film. From the opening scene to the finale that has the entire cast leading Valerie to a bed in a forest, even if you do remain confused with what you are watching, it is still possible to just sit back, turn off your brain and let your eyes have some fun. “Valerie and Her Week of Wonders” is a film that rolls a nice portion of fantasy and erotica with a smidgen of Gothic horror into one bewitching ball.

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