Tonight I watched a phantasmagorical film called "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders"(1970), made by Czech director Jaromil Jares and starring a young actress named Jaroslava Schallerova in the title role. I found the dvd while browsing the racks at Northridge Libe and since it was a Criterion release I decided to give it a try. Valerie is a girl who lives with her repressive grandmother in a small village in rural Czechoslovakia at some time during the Middle Ages. Grandma is a strange looking woman, youthful in build and posture but ancient in spirit. Also, her skin has a grey pallor that makes her appear one step shy of the graveyard. Valerie wants to know what happened to her parents, who died when she was small, but Grandma never gives her a straight answer.
Grandma has a boyfriend who is one of the local priests. He is also unusual in that he sometimes appears to be a monster who resembles Count Orlock (i.e. Max Schreck in his famous role). The villagers refer to the priest as The Polecat, for it is said that he can change into that animal. If Valerie's world sounds weird, that is the intent. The entire movie is presented as a fairy tale with photography and art direction to match.
Valerie soon has her first period, and like Carrie in the Stephen King book, she does not know what is happening to her body, as no one has informed her of the changes a girl goes through. But when she tells Grandma, the "old" woman becomes secretly excited. Grandma in turn tells The Polecat, and both make plans to re-invigorate themselves with Valerie's blood as she is now biologically an adult. In the process, they will also initiate Valerie into their order.
In case you haven't guessed by now, Valerie's Grandma and The Polecat are vampires. Poor Valerie is at their mercy, but she is a clever child and she also has an ally : her friend Eaglet, a studious young man who will go to great lengths to protect her. What neither Valerie nor Eaglet know is that they are brother and sister.
There is another person who covets Valerie, the head priest at the village parish. He is not one of the vampires, but worships at their feet. He uses his cover as a Man of the Cloth to sexually torment Valerie. His attempts at rape fail, however, because of the intervention of Eaglet. Valerie and Eaglet now know the priest's secret, which will not bode well for them as the story continues.
I did not initially appreciate "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders" because the story is thin, there isn't much dialogue, and the production had a bit of a Hippy era "sunshine and flowers" feel, with villagers and musicians dancing about like free spirits. Maybe that's not the best way to put it, but if you see the movie you'll understand what I mean. A day later, however, in retrospect I think I liked the movie a lot. For one thing, it looks absolutely fantastic. The soft daylight photography that was popular at the time in art films like "Elvira Madigan" is put to great use here, resulting in colors that reach out and grab you. Young Jaroslava Schallerova has great hair and an impish, angelic face that director Jares uses in close up after close up to capture Valerie's reactions to all that is going on around her. She is mainly an observer in her world, as if she had fallen through the looking glass as it were. The sets in the film are painted in velvety pastel hues, in accordance with the fairy tale motif. It's simply a gorgeous motion picture, and though it is "of it's era" in terms of the 1960s element previously mentioned, it neither looks nor feels dated, as some films from that period do when viewed nowdays.
I think that I was not ready for the film's experimental approach to storytelling and was expecting a conventional narrative, which is probably why I did not enjoy it as much while watching it for the first time as I did in hindsight. But today, I was walking around going, "Hmmm......that was an amazing looking film. Unique, too. In fact, it was really good. Now I think I like it"! What I need to do is watch it again, maybe in a month or two, so let me put that down on my checklist. I also forgot to mention that the acting is very good indeed. "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders" has the feel of a top notch alternative theater production with talent to match in every department. IMDB says that director Jares was a rising star in the Czech New Wave. I had never heard of him but I'll certainly be looking for more of his work.
I am gonna give "Valerie" Two Big Thumbs Up, with the caveat that it may not seem like your cup of tea at first. That's what happened with me, as I say. But if that is the case for you, please stick with it and watch it all the way through. I guarantee you'll end up liking it, and that may be the case anyway. You might love it from the get go. But be sure to check it out. You've never seen a film quite like it. And, it runs just 77 minutes, so you can't go wrong. /////
That's all for the time being. I will see you later tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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