Instant Favorite.

A Disappointing Continuation

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

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.

I can't say enough about how amazing this movie is. I'd seen a few Czech surrealist movies before, and really liked them, but this one takes the proverbial cake. It's currently residing at #2 on my favorite film list.The visual composition is stunning... each scene is a piece of art. The plot is a bit meandering, but it fits the theme (a girl who has her first period is overwhelmed with the world around her). The music is haunting... if you like it, there is a full soundtrack available. But all of this would be nothing without the amazing actress who plays Valerie; she exudes innocence, which is challenging in a movie which requires a 13-year old to be somewhat sexual (she's briefly naked, but it is done in a tasteful manner).If you like the surreal, this movie is an absolute treasure.

A potent mix of straight sex, lesbianism, incest, pedophilia, vampirism, paganism, wiccan practices and other assorted deviancy. A lot of symbolism is used, so that reality merges with fantasy and the material world merges with the virtual. As the film progresses, it is never very clear as to who the villain is, and who is the virgin. However, one premise is obvious: almost everyone lusts after the female protagonist, and although she appears angelic, she is also no stranger to the wiles of men, including lustful priests, vampires and even her own father or brother. Watchable, at least once, for the waif-like beauty, Valerie, and her forays into a mystical, magical and surreal world, where corpses converse with the living, and brothers lust for their sisters.

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.