Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Valerie a týden divu)
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List Price:
$29.95
Czech Hotels Travel Price:
$26.99
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Manufacturer: Facets
Starring: Jaroslava Schallerová, Helena Anýzová, Petr Kopriva, Jirí Prýmek, Jan Klusák
Directed By: Jaromil Jires
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9781565803855
Format: Color
ISBN: 156580385X
Label: Facets
Manufacturer: Facets
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Facets
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2004-01-13
Running Time: 77
Studio: Facets
Theatrical Release Date: 1970
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Editorial Reviews:
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"Boldly in the paths of Bergman, Fellini, and Bunuel" - NY TIMES / "Strange, mad, beautiful…" - CHICAGO SUN-TIMES / recently toured U.S. arthouses / A horror story with a nest of vampires. A bewitching fairy tale about a young girl’s coming of age. VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS is a betwitching fairy tale in the tradition of ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Valerie discovers the world is not what it seems after she gets a pair of magical earrings. This haunting portrait of a beautiful girl’s emergence into womanhood is a ravishingly beautiful dream film in which horror and sexuality mix with tenderness and innocence.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Shifting dreamscape
Comment: When I read Nezval's 1930s novel, I was sure it would work well in a visual medium. The book didn't so much narrate a story as align images against each other, creating a series of vivid visual impressions. This movie captures that sense beautifully.
Like the book, this movie offers little in the way of linear story line. Instead, sequences of event show the effect that Valerie's emerging womanhood has on those around her, including men tempted by her young beauty and older women jealous of it. Wantons around her foretell the love life that she'll have some day, and other young beauties reflect her temptation back at her. But, under it all, vampiric beings and shapeshifters carry out rituals with inscrutable purpose.
Part of this movie's quirky charm comes from its low-budget effects, part comes from the fresh-faced Valerie. Another part comes from analogies to a very strange Alice in Wonderland, in which the girl seems more of a spectator to a world with an inner logic that escapes her. If you're willing to trade plot for mystery and magic in a movie, give this one a shot.
-- wiredweird
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece!!
Comment: Czech New Wave at its finest. Surreal, beautiful images, magnificent story, extraordinary sets, captivating characters and a story to get lost in! Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys the art involved in film, fantasy, post-modernism or surrealism!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Edited for American Sensitivities?
Comment: I haven't seen this movie; I was going to buy it here until I noticed that this version is 74 minutes, while all the European versions are 77 minutes. That would suggest that about 4% of the movie has been cut for the American market. [Amazon.ca (Canada) doesn't give a length, so it may or may not be the full version.] There are a couple of unclothed scenes, one where a priest touches Valorie's bosom, and another where she prays before before getting into bed. I'd guess these are edited out of this version.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "Good Night, My Brunette" ~ Nosferatu Meets Little Red Riding Hood
Comment: Note: Czech with English subtitles.
I would like to make two things perfectly clear at the beginning of this review. First of all, I do not claim to understand this film. Secondly, I will make no attempt whatsoever to explain the storyline. Well, maybe just a little.
The '70 film from the Czech Republic `Valerie and Her Week of Wonders' which was written and directed by Jaromil Jires is quite possibly the strangest, most incomprehensible film I've ever watched. It consists of a most unlikely mixture of nostalagic musical interludes displaying childhood memories of purity and innocence; a white room where the sound of a music box adored with a spinning ballerina fills the room, beautiful, blossoming flowers fill the pathway outside the house where just beyond a brightly colored forests of amber leaves dominate the landscape.
However childhood is coming to an end for the absolutely enchanting Valerie (Jaroslava Shallerova), the process of becoming a woman has begun during a brief stroll in the yard. Now the veil of naïvete has been lifted from her eyes and visions of another kind now begin to appear and beckon in stark and horrifying juxtaposition to the world she used to know. Depraved priests and vampire-like missionaries compete for her affections while overzealous flagellants pursue the young man of her desire. To further confuse and entice poor Valerie, an intermittent band of blonde haired muses in peasant dresses roam the forest exchanging amorous embraces soon awaken a strange fascination within her.
`Valerie and Her Week of Wonders' is visually stunning to the point of intoxication, yet totally incoherent in storyline. While the viewer is transfixed by the presence of the lovely Jaroslava one is left to feel captive to an onslaught of vampirism, voyeurism, sadomasochism, lesbianism and depravity. Truly the most voyeuristic film I've ever watched. This one is definitely for a very select, artistically oriented audience, file it away in your DVD case next to Fellini's `Satyricon'.
Customer Rating:
Summary: come on!
Comment: Man, get a clue you people! This so-called "anti-catholic" film was released in the 1970s (during a period of intense social repression in Czechoslovakia) not because it was too "weird" for the censors, but because the original writer of the novel, Vitezslav Nezval, was one of the most celebrated communist poets of the 20th century. He was an upper ranking bureaucrat in the Ministry of Information during the Communist seizure of power in 1948, and in the 1950s became the personal secretary of Vaclav Kopecky, the most powerful (and feared) communist in Stalinist Czechoslovakia. Why do you assume that a good piece of artwork from a communist country must necessarily be anti-communist, or that artwork made by communists must necessarily be garbage propaganda? Get a history book. At any rate this has nothing to do with the film itself, which was released under a brutal political regime in the 1970s, and just happens to be excellent.
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