The 70s had been an amazing decade for surrealistic motives and imagery in style movies—together with such unbelievable gems as Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s The Holy Mountain, Louis Malle‘s Black Moon and Dario Argento‘s Suspiria. After which got here one other nice instance of surrealist cinema out of Japanese Europe within the type of Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Directed by Jaromil Jires, it was part of the Czechoslovakian New Wave, however got here off as avant-garde and daring even for this beautiful liberated motion. The movie did face its justifiable share of obstacles, however ended up reaching a worldwide viewers that had seen many variations of a coming-of-age story by that point. Nonetheless, none of them tackled this subject like this: depicting the bizarre place between harmless childhood and inevitable maturity, particularly proven via the angle of feminine expertise, in such an uncompromisingly surreal method.
What Is ‘Valerie and Her Week of Wonders’ About?
The story begins considerably realistically as 13-year-old Valerie (Jaroslava Schallerová) resides quietly along with her grandmother in a small picturesque city. Her principally perfect existence in a world the place it is completely summer time begins to shatter as a mysterious determine steals her treasured earrings whereas she’s sleeping. Later, the woman encounters a creepy man sporting a marten’s masks—The Constable—after which the thief himself, a seemingly good-natured younger man, Orlík, who warns her of an impending hazard. The resultant chain of occasions consists of Valerie’s grandmother’s quest to get again her youth with the assistance of her former lover, The Constable, vampires looking forward to harmless ladies’s blood, magical jewellery, threats of being burned on the stake, and hints of incest.
The extra the story progresses, the extra it noticeably and deliberately loses the coherent narrative thread, making house for more and more weird imagery that’s each sensual and scary. Based mostly on a novel by a well-known Czech surrealist author, Vítêzslav Nezval, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders seems and sounds as if Sigmund Freud and Lewis Carroll determined to collaborate on a venture with its many symbols—from a number of mirrors that seem all through the story to blood splattered on daisies. Thanks not solely to the visually beautiful cinematography, but additionally a really distinctive, haunting soundtrack that might acquire cult fame of its personal, the movie emphasizes the precipice its younger heroine finds herself on—between the acquainted oasis of childhood and the grownup world that seems to be sinister.
The World of Maturity Is a Unusual Place, and It Has Enamel
The London premiere of Valerie and Her Week of Wonders was attended by a well-known author, Angela Carter, who was mentioned to get pleasure from it. Within the 80s, Carter would go on to collaborate with director Neil Jordan on a screenplay primarily based on one in all her brief tales, which might turn into the cult feminist horror The Firm of Wolves. The two movies are sometimes in contrast (typically even being proven again to again as a part of retrospective packages) for using comparable surrealistic and symbolic aesthetic, folklore motives, and addressing the theme of the sexual awakening of younger ladies in an allegorical method. However whereas Jordan’s movie makes use of werewolves to drive the metaphor of males’s shape-shifting nature dwelling, Jires’ turns to vampire lore.
Blood is a vital image within the movie because it hints not solely on the theme of a lady’s bodily transformation into a girl and discovering her needs, but additionally at the world round her discovering her sexuality too. At first, Valerie is fascinated by the approaching change in her physique, as evident in an early scene within the film the place she watches younger ladies within the lake, specializing in their breasts. Jaroslava Schallerová, who was rigorously chosen from about 1,500 ladies, emanates this sense of real surprise which later transforms right into a not-so-pleasant realization about her new actuality. The looks of an unnamed city the story takes place in works to this impact too. The very actual city of Slavonice is remodeled right into a surreal house between a pleasing fantasy and a nightmare.
The world is a hostile place in Jires’ movie usually, however particularly so in direction of ladies. Valerie’s grandmother, Elsa, is a tragic determine, not that completely different from Demi Moore‘s Elisabeth from The Substance. She is prepared to promote her soul and resorts to horrible doings in hopes of wanting youthful, as society (within the type of her newest lover, priest Gracián) calls for. A younger lady, Hedvika, enters a wedding solely to have her vitality sucked dry by it. And Valerie is confronted by maturity, a actuality stuffed with harmful males lusting after younger ladies’s blood—each actually and figuratively. Pale blood-sucking monsters in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders symbolize predatory conduct in direction of ladies—the subject that makes this beautiful and exquisitely weird movie from the Nineteen Seventies so related as we speak and corresponding to fashionable horror films about what it seems like for a woman on this world.
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
- Launch Date
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October 16, 1970
- Runtime
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77 Minutes
- Director
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Jaromil Jires
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Jaroslava Schallerová
Valerie
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Jirí Prýmek
Tchor-konstábl
