‘Valerie and Her Week of Wonders’: a horrific fairytale
One of the most compelling movies to emerge from the Czech New Wave was Valerie and her Week of Wonders, directed by Jaromil Jireš. Released in 1970, the film is incredibly surreal and dream-like, a bizarre concoction of folkloric imagery and gothic horror mixed with female coming-of-age.
Since its release, it has become somewhat of a cult classic. Numerous stills from the film, such as women wearing white dresses bathing in pools of water or Valerie sticking her tongue out as she narrowly avoids being burnt at the stake, have made their way onto sites like Pinterest. In recent years, it seems as though younger viewers have discovered Valerie and her Week of Wonders, too, enticed by the beautiful imagery and its thematic exploration of girlhood.
Valerie is a twisted exploration of girlhood, though, based on the novel of the same name by Vítězslav Nezval, written in 1935. Set in the 18th century, the film exposes the brutal reality of entering the adult world, where women are plagued with many issues that Valerie soon comes to learn all about over the course of her wondrous week. Near the beginning, she starts her period, and a not-so-subtle image of a white daisy covered in a drop of blood suggests that Valerie’s journey away from childhood and innocence starts now. She is constantly hounded by predatory men – one tries to rape her – and she is also a witness to her grandmother’s desperate pleas for youthfulness.
The narrative is not the easiest to follow, with characters morphing and remaining ambiguous when discussing their identities (it’s unclear whether the man with an interest in Valerie, Orlik, is her brother or not). Dreamy sequences weave in and out, and horrifying figures, such as a man with hideous teeth wearing a catpole mask and the vampiric women, destabilise our viewing experience – and Valerie’s world – with their unsettling presences.
There is a real dichotomy between horror and fairytale imagery, blurring the lines between the two. As Valerie is inducted into the adult world, where desire and abuse run rampant, she must defend herself as best she can. While many of her surroundings look straight out of a picture book or an Impressionist painting, at every turn, she is confronted by corruption. The film descends into a disorientating surrealist nightmare, soundtracked by a beautiful yet often creepy soundtrack by Luboš Fišer. It’s often hard to pinpoint what’s real and what’s not, but that’s for us to work out as a vampire crypt is revealed, a man who appeared to be dead turns up miraculously alive, and Valerie’s pearl earrings strangely prove to be the key to her survival.
Many people praise the work’s uniqueness, yet less discussed is its deliberate exploration of eroticism, often placing Valerie in sexualised situations. The actor, Jaroslava Schallerová, was just 13 when she filmed the movie, and there are multiple scenes in which she can be seen naked. It’s certainly an uncomfortable watch, as these moments frame her in a delicate light, the camera’s focus on her body wholly unneeded. While it depicts her transition from childhood into the early stages of adulthood, where girls as young as 13 are often treated like mini-adults and objects of desire, Jireš fails to avoid the perpetuation of inappropriate imagery by depicting Valerie in an eroticised manner.
This seems to contradict the message of the film, playing into the male gaze while simultaneously attempting to expose the horrible actions of men which young girls inevitably face as they enter the sexualised adult sphere. The moment where the priest tries to rape Valerie is particularly hard to watch, and while the young girl does fight him off, we see him pull down her dress, something that just isn’t necessary to include.
Valerie and her Week of Wonders is an odd movie; it’s an intoxicating blend of fantasy and horror that pushes the art house boundaries through its use of abstract imagery. It’s easy to see why it is a cult classic, but its occasionally uneasy depiction of Valerie and her body should not be ignored. While the film is certainly a horrific, twisted take on the fairytale, it sometimes seems as though Jireš loses sight of what he is supposed to be taking aim at within his narrative.
