There’s a Good Purpose Why This Darkish, Surrealistic Cinematic Fairytale Is One of many Most Revered Cult Motion pictures of All Time

The 70s had been a terrific 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 Jap 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 gorgeous liberated motion. The movie did face its justifiable share of obstacles, however ended up reaching a worldwide viewers that had seen many versions 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 by means of the perspective of female experience, 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 town. Her largely ultimate 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 carrying 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 ensuing chain of occasions contains Valerie’s grandmother’s quest to get again her youth with the assistance of her former lover, The Constable, vampires anticipating harmless ladies’s blood, magical jewellery, threats of being burned at the stake, and hints of incest.

The extra the story progresses, the extra it noticeably and deliberately loses the coherent narrative thread, making area 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 appears and sounds as if Sigmund Freud and Lewis Carroll determined to collaborate on a undertaking 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 stunning cinematography, but in addition a really distinctive, haunting soundtrack that may 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 famous writer, Angela Carter, who was said to enjoy it. Within the 80s, Carter would go on to collaborate with director Neil Jordan on a screenplay primarily based on one among her brief tales, which might change into the cult feminist horror The Company of Wolves. The two movies are sometimes in contrast (typically even being proven again to again as a part of retrospective applications) 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 house, Jires’ turns to vampire lore.

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Blood is a vital image within the movie because it hints not solely on the theme of a girl’s physical transformation into a woman and discovering her wishes, but in addition at the world around her discovering her sexuality too. At first, Valerie is fascinated by the upcoming 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 marvel 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 transformed into a surreal space between a nice fantasy and a nightmare.

The world is a hostile place in Jires’ movie basically, however particularly so in the 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 keen to promote her soul and resorts to horrible doings in hopes of trying 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 characterize predatory habits in the direction of ladies—the subject that makes this gorgeous and exquisitely weird movie from the 1970s so related at present and akin to modern horror movies about what it seems like for a lady on this world.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

Launch Date

October 16, 1970

Runtime

77 Minutes

Director

Jaromil Jires

Writers

Vitezslav Nezval, Ester Krumbachová, Jaromil Jires, Jirí Musil

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  Jaroslava Schallerová

  Valerie

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  Jirí Prýmek

  Tchor-konstábl