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.
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.