A lot of times when watching a surrealist film it’s a lot
like watching a dream, but when viewing the Czech fantasy/horror Valerie and Her Week of Wonders it
really feels like I’m the one that’s dreaming, wondering when someone is going
to wake me. Here, the thoughts and images of the subconscious mind pervade, and the effect
is that of surrealist automatism applied to film making. Saying the film is
beautifully dreamlike, disorienting, and hallucinatory should not be mistaken as fan-boy code
for a beautiful looking inept film with a messy plot. It’s actually quite the
artistic achievement. The music and imagery are magical, to say the least, and
the events are the stuff of
dreams and nightmares of the child’s mind in the early stages of maturity, the
accumulated fantasy-influenced imagination gathered during childhood coupled
with the fears and wonders of a young girl’s coming-of-age.
The plot centers
entirely around thirteen year old Valerie (Jaroslava
Schallerová) and her first day (or week, I can't quite tell) of being a woman. She loves flowers, birds,
and fruit, and her safety and security are connected to her magic earrings
given to her by her mother, whom she knows to be deceased along with her
father. She lives with her Grandmother (Helena
Anýzová), and frequently consoles with a boy named Orlik (Petr Kopriva), whose creepy father, the Weasel
(Jirí Prýmek), a
boogeyman and one of the antagonists of the story, is a dead ringer for Nosferatu. Her world is
like that of a fairytale, and her innocence and purity as well as her own
wellbeing are threatened by a lecherous religious leader, Gracián (Jan Klusák), and vampires. Thankfully
she has those magic earring pearls.
