REVIEW: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

           Last night, I had the opportunity of watching a surrealist Czechoslovak film, called Valerie and Her Week of Wonders- a film which captures Valerie, a young heroine caught in a dreamlike state, after putting on a pair of magic earrings. It is truly nonlinear, and also set in a bizarre medieval-esque landscape inhabited by priests, vampires, and nymphs. The main nymph is Valerie; this is a story of her confronting the confusion of womanhood.

     Throughout the story, we see Valerie face a strange variety of evils who are all hellbent on corrupting her feminine purity. The first villain we see is "Weasel", a mysteriously pale (and gross) male figure who frequently invades Valerie's personal space, by transfiguring himself into a weasel. 

      In this shot, Valerie attends a wedding with her grandmother, and sees Weasel leering at her, weasel mask in hand. He clearly is a symbol of the "male gaze". This is the first indication we see of a conflict between Valerie and the corrupted world around her. The second indicator is Valerie's grandmother, Elsa:

        Elsa is, aside from her grey cast face, suspiciously young-looking for a grandmother. We quickly realize that she is (literally) a vampire. This realization is a symbol of Valerie's need to distinguish fantasy from reality, in her dreamscape.

        The entire plot basically involves Valerie's attempts to evade these villains' attempts to rape her, and drink her blood. Again, everyone around wants to ravish her, steal her youthful beauty, or kill her. 

        While the 1970's camerawork and set design, endless loops, and creepy situations may cause discomfort in some viewers, they are necessary to convey the haziness and horror of womanhood.

     

 

     If you are interested in aesthetic films, surrealism, or feminism, I would recommend this to you. I believe that English majors and readers of literature will especially enjoy this film, because it is full of motif, theme, and symbolism.