Valerie and Her Week of What the Hell Did I Just Watch

“A polecat-faced vampire, named simply Polecat—campily aware of his own hideousness—arrives and does his best to reclaim the family seat. Valerie’s grandmother becomes a vampire herself,hoping to win back her former lover (a sinister Catholic priest). Thanks to her magic earrings, Valerie manages to slip from the priest's clutches when he tries to molest her, eludes her grandmother’s fangs, cures (by means of a tender lesbian tryst) another young woman who has been bitten, and survives a burning at the stake. There’s also a handsome young man named Eaglet who gets her out of several sticky situations, and whether he’s her brother or her boyfriend remains ambiguous.“

“Valerie and Her Week of Wonders” is a film of heightened surrealism, with a dreamlike quality that captivates its audience through the use of vivid imagery and an absolutely haunting score. The film is as mesmerizing as it is disturbing, leaving its audience feeling a confused sort of enlightenment – glad for having experienced its one-of-a-kind charm, and yet unable to fully process (or even follow) the plot line. This unshakable feeling of incompleteness isn’t the result of a poorly made movie; rather, it’s a stylist choice employed by Jireš in order to leave the audience questioning the reality of what they’ve just witnessed.

"in Valerie, a fable whose general outline is familiar, the quick and often disorienting shifts are intended to shatter any reliable sense of what is real and to lend the folkloric proceedings a mad, impish tone."

The movie is said to be reminiscent of “Alice In Wonderland,” with Valerie’s descent into womanhood the equivalent of Alice’s descent down the rabbit hole. The vibrancy of the world around her, the loss of childhood innocence, the series of unbelievable events and narrow escapes – these all contribute to this idea of disorientation. The disorientation that we feel in “Valerie” is meant to mimic that of a hallucination, and the absurdity of the journey she embarks on plays into this idea at every turn. (See: every scene with vampire granny) This feeling intensifies throughout the story, creating a sense of urgency that underlies the young girl’s abrupt emergence into adulthood.

Overall: the plotline, questionable. We never really get any answers to our many questions. By the end of the movie we’re somehow even more confused than we were at the beginning, only now we’re questioning everything we thought we knew. Valerie’s familial ties drive the movie, and yet they’re ambiguous to the point of discomfort. (Seriously, is he her brother or her boyfriend? Or both?) The womanly awakening Valerie experiences is disturbing at best -cue half a dozen child molestation attempts- but overall, the word taboo pretty much sums up this movie perfectly. Everything in it goes against societal standards, pushing the boundaries not only between good and bad but between fantasy and reality.

The imagery, however, is beautiful. The contrast between sharp, vivid colors that jump out at you and the muted whites that make you feel as if you’re watching through a haze plays perfectly into the movie’s dreamlike state. The score is beautiful and haunting, strange and yet somehow innocent. “Valerie” is a movie about experience, not comprehension, and in that aspect it excels at every turn.