Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

All you Freudians out there will have a field day with this one. It's a transcendent trip into a magical past where mythical creatures mix and mingle with the mortals and stalk the land in search of prey. The beautiful virginal goddess Valerie has her sexual awakening and is harassed by vampires, lecherous clerics, and her jealous grandmother. She may or may not be in love with her brother. The director Jaromil Jireš uses a great deal of psychosexual and outright sexual imagery. His camera loves to linger on young Valerie’s budding alabaster body, and she spends most of the movie wearing what looks like a very lacy and fragile nightgown. At times this feels exploitative, but it can be forgiven because the level of the high level of artistry. It's a lot like Paradjanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors the way it mixes these colorful and kinetic visuals infused with folklore and dreamy music. The colors and imagery evoke a late autumnal feel, and the actors all appear as if they are ready for Halloween with their grandiose, exaggerated gestures resembling the best of the gothic silent films (the vampire, especially, his appearance very much mirroring Max Schreck in Nosferatu) and their playful romping around in colorful costumes. The movie is so baroque and stylized that describing it in words makes it sound like an absurd comedy as opposed to a gothic fairy tale, but it’s precisely that absurdity that makes the movie so chilling and effective. The film is very much informed by the silent cinema, especially in its use of visuals and music over dialogue to tell the story, and over-the-top melodrama is a part of that. If you’ve ever read any of Angela Carter’s subverted fairy tales, or seen the original Wicker Man, those should give you a good idea of what to expect from Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Some viewers may be turned off by the cryptic final act and the abrupt ending, while others will relish it. I wish that this had been a bit longer, and while not sacrificing its mysteries had perhaps come to a more fleshed out conclusion. Those who enjoy this type of down-the-rabbit-hole cinema will love Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, and even those who are more ambivalent to it will find much to love in the magnetic beauty of its protagonist and the fable like quality of its storytelling.