Sadly Over-hyped

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Inspired by fairy-tales such as Alice in Wonderland and Little Red-Riding Hood, "Valerie and her Week of Wonders" is a surreal tale in which love, fear, sex and religion merge into one fantastic world: a disorienting dream, cajoled by priests, vampires, men and women alike, and blends elements of fantasy and horror films.Many writers have cited similarities between the film and the work of English writer Angela Carter, who had seen the film during its release in England. Her screenplay for "The Company of Wolves" (1984) adapted from Carter's short stories, in collaboration with director Neil Jordan, bears a direct or indirect influence.This connection is great, taking the surrealism of the Czech cinema and giving it a bit of a spin. "Wolves" is a bit more linear, a bit more straightforward. But the similarities are clear.

The lovely and enchanting Jaroslava Schallerova stars as the title character, a girl on the verge of womanhood. She exists in a medieval fantasy land where such things as vampires and witches can exist. She seeks to learn the truth about her parentage, encountering a rich variety of characters. Among them are the likable, well-meaning Eaglet and the creepy "man" known as The Polecat.This won't appeal to everybody; some viewers may believe it to be too "arty". But it's richly rewarding for those looking for an unconventional take on genre fare. Drawing inspiration from fairy tales such as "Alice in Wonderland" and "Little Red Riding Hood", director Jaromil Jires draws us into an intoxicating atmosphere. Music, costumes, and sets are all absolutely breathtaking. Jires dares to take his time with the pacing, yet his film runs a scant 77 minutes. It touches upon such subjects as innocence (and the loss of same), jealousy, vanity, sex, religion, and decadence. Viewers should be aware, however, that despite the presence of elements such as vampires and witches, that this is anything but a typical horror film.Extremely well acted, heartfelt, and thoughtful, this is an interesting entertainment. It would play very well as part of a double feature with the American film "Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural". It may not have much in the way of gore or nudity, but it doesn't need these things to make an impact.Eight out of 10.

There exists a short but unique list that I cherish; only containing titles that are both incomprehensibly weird and inexplicably fascinating! This particular list exclusively features rare but elite cult gems, such as "Sweet Movie", "In a Glass Cage", "Eraserhead", "I Walk Like a Crazy Horse", "El Topo", "Singapore Sling" and maybe a small handful of others. Only seldom a new addition is made to this list, but if there's one title that truly deserves an honorary ranking, it has got to be "Valerie and her Week of Wonders"! Long ago, when Czechoslovakia was still just one country, writer/director Jaromil Jires fabricated what can arguably be considered as the most surreal and lyrical 'coming of age' movie ever. The narrative feels like a fairy-tale (hence my similar writing style thus far) but the themes are mature, provocative, erotic and controversial. Yet, in spite of the exploitative nature of the subject matter, the film never descends towards the depiction of perversion or even gratuitous sleaze. "Valerie and her Week of Wonders" remains playfully surreal and suggestive from start to finish and the whole film is literally a spitfire of absorbing images, intriguing characters, dreamy music and hypnotizing sets & scenery. The pivot character Valerie is a beautiful and cherubic 13-year-old girl. The events of the film illustrate her first ventures into adolescence. Triggered by her first menstruation – although she believes it's because of a new and magical pair of earrings – Valerie encounters new people and looks differently at people she already knows. Like her grandmother, who's jealous of Valerie's youthful purity, a perpetrator with multiple personalities (including a vampire and a religious zealot) and a geeky boy with more or less the same age and who may or not be her sibling. Suddenly Valerie exclusively witnesses tableaux around her that spark her curiosity in sex even more, varying from arousing to downright macabre. The power of films like "Valerie and her Week of Wonders" lies within the fact that all the imagery and content can be interpreted in various ways, by different viewers, but also by one and the same viewer depending on his/her state of mind. I, for one, don't even daresay that I understood all the things I saw and got confused on more than one occasion. It also doesn't matter too much, as the movie remains visually striking and haunting regardless of interpretation. The male adult protagonist is most frightening, what with his bad dental hygiene and resemblance to Max Schreck's Nosferatu, and also the many folklore rituals generate a strangely uncanny atmosphere. A must for avid cult collectors and offbeat cinema.

Jaromil Jires's decidedly dreamlike Czechoslovakian film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, takes place in the countryside, as Valerie visits her relatives at their turn-of-the-century estate, only to find that they are vampires, engaging in a sort of ecstatic summer orgy into which Valerie will be initiated. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a deeply eccentric text, infusing a coming-of-age story with Edenic concepts of purity and lust, inclusion and banishment, into a sensuous tapestry in which nothing is as it seems.Written by Jires, Ester Krumbachova, and Vitezslav Nezval, the films brevity and its seductive mise-en-scene sumptuously photographed by Jan Curik, make the film seem almost an outlaw project, or an act of social criticism designed to "enforce atheism by embracing an anti-Catholic stance, particularly in relation to sexual morality. Yet the films embrace of sexual excess, and the almost fetishistic depiction of bodily fluids, color, light , flesh tones, and gauzy fabrics, bespeaks an atmosphere of absolute sexual license, rather than creating a fantasy world of repression. In many ways, Valerie is very much like Alice in Alice in Wonderland, reacting to the bizarre circumstances that unfold before her.The film begins with an image of Adam and Eve, and Valerie is often seen eating apples in close-up, her overripe lips lingering over the succulent fruit with undisguised satisfaction. Thus Valerie provides us with an image of feminine desire before and after the fall of Eden but without the attached blame that Eve shoulders in Western Christian mythology. Instead, Valerie is seen by the film as a giver of life, a force of purity too intense to be corrupted, while her grandmother becomes a vessel of corruption. This is a film that is deeply tied to nature at its most gloriously ripe season, summer, and Valerie herself partakes of this lushness with direct and unabashed delight.Valerie and Her Week of Wonders presents a world in which all is allegory, ones relatives may be vampires, and all authority figures are suspect; in the opening minutes of the film, a priest enters Valerie's dazzlingly white bedroom and almost immediately tries to rape her. Valerie extricates herself from the priest's attack but remains justly suspicious of authority for the rest of the film. What protects Valerie, above all other things, is her connection to nature, which preserves her position within the film as a force of hope within a crumbling family structure.In many ways Valerie and Her Week of Wonders can be read as a more sexually explicit vision of the coming-of-age narrative, centering on the freedom of youth, than its numerous American and British counterparts. Valerie emerges triumphant at the end of the film, despite all adult attempts to corrupt her, and the purity and innocence of her metaphoric quest is valorized by the film's ambiguous conclusion, in which all the films events are called into question; it may all have been a dream.