Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

BeeDub and His Week of Wondering What the Hell This Movie Was All About

A strange fantasy/nightmare about a young girl whose sexual awakening is being haunted by vampires, lesbians, lesbian vampires, incestuous vampires, incestuous non-vampires, and demented priests. Magic earrings are also involved. Some of the imagery is quite striking, and the music is haunting. The non-sequitur editing reminded me a great deal of Jires' Czech contemporary Vera Chytilova, who has a similar no-nonsense approach to nonsense. Fans of Jodorowsky will probably enjoy this, too.

Would not work as a radio play. The imagery is beautiful but I lost a little bit of focus when I didn't understand what was going on for the entire runtime. If I wanted to be catty (or wolfy as it were) I'd say Ginger Snaps did it better, but I don't honestly believe that.

Psycho-Freud coming-of-age Jung arthouse jammed together like Beat poetry. No real narrative sequence to speak of but images and concepts come at you like BAM religion BAM vampires! BAM incest! BAM more incest! Nice cinematography though!

I found this quite difficult to get a proper handle upon, and it was, quite truthfully, a bit noncey. However, it left an impression on me, echoing stuff like Alice in Wonderland, fairy tales and folk horror yarns; it was full of dream logic, and made and cast rather beautifully. I think it's definitely worth a rewatch, although I'm not convinced I'll be able to grasp its full meaning. A genuinely enjoyable curiosity.

Well, that's a different vampire movie. Like Herzog's Nosferatu filtered through a dream and shot up with pubescent hormones. Gets a little too carried away with the narrative shortcircuits, but a ride worth taking.

Male directors in the 70s be like my film is very meaningful anyway here’s a naked child

Surface story is of a young girl, who is having her first period, her sexual awekening. Which is explored in her dreams, or should i say nightmares, with a little taste of incest and lesbianism. And beneath movie surface situation in Czechoslovakia at that time is explored. Communism gets its strenght from priest, constable - forms of corrupt authority. Actors, artists are the opposing, light side. Who wins? In the end of this fairytale there can't be good without bad, and light without dark.

Teenage girl gets her period for the first time and loses herself in strange sexual fantasies involving vampires, lecherous priests, her weird incestuous family and her own death. Just perfect in every way, one of my favourite films ever, a stunningly beautiful erotic fairytale.

A good example of the crazier, more experimental cinema out of Czechoslovakia of that era. Valerie is an almost plotless montage of surreal events surrounding a 13-year-old and her sexual awakening. It's an avant-garde childern's erotic romantic vampire horror fantasy. I don't know what Jires was on but the whole thing is like an alternately good and bad trip.

Through allusions to fairy tales, medieval and the use of a dream-like narrative, I saw this as an attempt to express the interior world of a girl going through puberty. It's a decent attempt, but the film didn't have much of an impact on me. However, teenage girls may feel differently (not that parents would approve). Definitely has a 70s look and feel. (ps: 70)

On the one hand, it's beautifully immaculate, the cinematography and culturally strange mise en scene is gorgeous, and the music is beautiful as well. On the other hand, it's so obtuse that it gets in the way of drawing me in -- whenever I start to get into the film, it backs away from me by cutting to another random scene. I guess that ties in with its purposefully dreamlike nature, and it is somewhat successful in that regard.

Great surreal imagery and a compelling, and strange, narrative with a wonderful lead. At times the dreamlike quality got a little too hard to grasp for me, but for the most part it was a fun time.

A surreal fantasy exploding with beautiful imagery. The last 20 minutes are kind of weak, though.

eh, i like the idea of this movie, but the mediocre production values really did it in for me. everything looked so bland and theatrical that i couldn't really get into the weirdness. it was like jodorowsky without the grandeur and the daring. also the music really sucked.

Equally beautiful and menacing. Perfectly captures that creepy end-of-innocence feeling and awkward sexuality of early puberty. The ending is rather weak, but everything up to that point is nearly flawless.

Scenes of lovely young girls is this movies only redeeming quality. This has to be the stupidest most horribly told story I have ever seen. The entire film is just one nonsensical disjointed scene followed by another. Any slight whisper of a plot quickly evaporates, leaving the viewer totally confused and lost. The entire movie is like a nightmare that you can't remember after you wake up. I just can't believe I sat through the whole horrible mess.

Like a Jodorowsky movie but actually good? Beautiful visuals and eerie, captivating mood although it works much better as a stream-of-consciousness parade of dreamlike imagery than as whatever narrative it attempts to cohere into. I can definitely see it's influence on the band Broadcast...

Valerie (Jaroslava Schallerová) as she blossoms into womanhood and perceives, in her distorted way, the effect of sex in her community. For some it's just an afternoon frolick, for others it's a powerplay. For the moralistic religious crew, it's best avoided at all costs. Valerie takes all this in and we view it through the lense of her imaginings, a surreal, whimsical, strange and dark dream.

Every shot is perfection. Transforms the fears of young womanhood into a fairy tale nightmare.

wwickedd

Interesting portayal of the "loss of innocence", beginning of sexuality etcetera. But it's a bit over-laden with too many symbols. I get them, but the mix is too rich in too many flavors.

Like Carrie, but with more fangs.

This is an absolute nightmare. I couldn't tell you if that's a good thing or a bad thing. There are visuals in this film that will stick with me forever, lurking in the dark recesses of the mind. It's a good movie.

Like The Hourglass Sanitorium, V.A.H.W.O.W is a film that must be contended with on its own terms otherwise it's easy to dismiss as a confusing mess. Inspired by archetypes of fairy tales and folkore, Jires creates a surrealistic tale that draws heavily on Freudian psychology to tell a symbolic story of a beautiful young woman's sexual awakening played by the ravishing Schallerová with the right mix of feminine allure and purity. The imagery is striking and it doesn't overstay its welcome.

Visually intriguing in its thematic, but the film's plot has a tendency to meander a lot and go nowhere in favor of trying to create avant-garde imagery. It's damn cool imagery mind you, but I can only take so much of "wow, what a trippy dream bro!" Before I get bored. It's not exactly subtle nor leaves much up for interpretation - the only real thing that's up in the air is how much of the plot is a dream, but that's hardly an engaging question.

The fantasy of a girl around the time of her first period. Odd

JudoKoala and his night of watching this after one too many hits. Huuuuuuuhhhnnnn?????

My memory of this bears a strong and lasting resonance of something fabulous, and it will remain the case. Upon rewatching it, my initial impressions remain also, that this film is gorgeous and unique, but even with its short run-time, is padded out with lots of repetitive and dispensable scenes. It's often plodding, but does accumulate into a certainly unforgettable experience.

Highly expressive presentation of the onset of female pubescence, featuring many high-angle and gauzy lens shots and a bunch of attractive girls. The filmmakers deserve credit for taking on this theme and for trying to create a unique oneiric, fairytale cosmos in which to explore it, fashioned with a great deal of aesthetic invention. Still, the latter never quite escapes a sense of kitsch or even soft-core porn, and the psychosexual content seems a bit muddled, superficial or just impenetrable.

The details in the production design are stunning. Filmmakers nowadays are too cowardly to make a movie this beautiful.

Beautiful shot, but this dreamlike fairytale horror overall didn't work for me.

Grandmother: Hedvika is marrying Valerie: Poor Hedvika

Horrors of womanhood. And it's based on a book written by a man. Great movie.

This happens, when Lolita, not Alice, comes to the Wonderland.

Valerie ve onun extravagant sinema stilini sevmiyorum ama bu film sapik papazin dansi icin bile izlenir.

Surreal tale, no deep thoughts, if the film was not made under communist regime, the depiction of "dark priests" could be associated with the "standard" horror imagery, but in the context of 1970, it seems as a political command, not as an act of creation. The film was characterised also as "the best soft-porn of the normalisation era".

In which Orlok may have sired an Amish child and Valerie, who has a penchant for eating earrings. She tends to hang out in spiderweb-covered creepy places, which is a weird way to spend the week in which you get your first period. Although it's bonkers, it is arguably beautiful, and one you mutter, "They sure don't make 'em like that anymore."

Alice in Pervertland

Utter beauty. Fear and sex, blood, wine, pearls, plague, faith and sin spiral into the magnificent end of understanding and acceptance.

É um bom filme, com todo o desenvolver das metáfora psicanalíticas e tudo, mas não é de longe tudo que falam dele. Não ajuda dar de cara com seu público pedófilo, como por exemplo um senhor idoso no letterboxd dizendo o quão sexy a Jaroslava Schallerová estava nesse filme, ugh. Uma coisa é a sexualidade infantil como simbologia psicanalítica, outra bem diferente é vocês levaram ao pé da letra a significação da arte, seus maníacos sexuais. BlurayRip no MakingOff

Visually, it's really nice and I love how surreal it is as well, but honestly it just doesn't hold up even with it's short run time.

Unmitigated nonsense

Valerie and her week of what the hell is happening? I (slightly) kid the film. Quite early on I thought "oh, so it's going to be like this, is it?" and abandoned the idea of trying to follow a plot. Viewed in that fashion, there are a lot of wondrous sights to behold.

A fantasy style film where a girl's confusion over sexuality is pushed to the screen. There are a collection of miniature stories that almost fit together that communicate fear, love and uncertainty to varying degrees. There's some fantastic imagery that you're unlikely to forget.

Fun fact: Jaroslava Schallerová was chosen from over 1,500 girls who auditioned for the role of Valerie.

As beautiful and poetic as it is incomprehensible, this uses dream logic throughout and does so very successfully. Go into this prepared to understand little but feel a lot. At 73 minutes it doesn't overstay it's welcome, often a problem with movies as abstract and surreal as this. Also be warned that it both sexualizes and undresses its' 13-year old lead actress, which is something you may be right to feel a bit uncomfortable about.

Pretty nice. I'd place it slightly below top-tier Rollin movies.

Some of this is nice and strange and I really like the music, but somehow it didn't quite feel strange enough, and I can't abide the violence towards animals.