Valérie au pays des merveilles

This is the best "girl gets her period" film I've ever seen. The week she comes of age, Valerie sees sex through many lenses. It is a very confusing time for her, full of danger and sensuality.

The film makes great use of color and music. The entire feature has a dreamy quality, not least because of the relentless and uneven symbolic representations. This film should be shown to every teenage girl, who should then go back and watch it again and again as she ages.

Exquisite aesthetic is not enough for me, especially in itself. I want layered stratagems, nested worlds, the built of an oblique carpentry, the stuff that Lynch deals in, Wojciech Has, Ruiz; or a unified space impregnated with those things, as in the films of Antonioni or Resnais. I want magic, the spontaneous and impromptu, to well up from a familiar view of life, poetry from mundane essentials, for example the scenes of Tokyo roads in Solyaris is the most amazing rite of passage I have seen. It's passage from a tangible world.

With something like this I have no point of entry. There is no double perspective, or one foot in a world that matters. It's one long psychosexual dream stirred up from restless sleep, a young girl's guilt nightmare of a throbbing sexuality.

Life inside the grandmother's house is sterile, but outside it booms with activity and rigor. Of course once out there, the adult world poses a constant threat; its web of dark, barely comprehensible forces - none too subtly dressed up in monk garbs, there's also a demonic figure in black who addresses from the pulpit a congregation of fearful maidens - out to drink life from youth. The film appropriates suitable imagery from the vampire film.

So even though the artistry is excellent, the nightmare effective, I am just not at all interested in teasing out symbolic detail from a rural pageant. There is this one layer, and the most pressing question for the film seems to be how much of that is a dream. But again, something hardly worth puzzling over.

This is a problem in general with the surreal part of the Czech school; while inventive craftsmen, they cannot seem to layer their narratives around a solid, penetrating core. So we get beautiful but scattershot imagination. On the other hand, their comedies are superb for the same reason.

A "coming of age" story like no other, this Czech Gothic fairytale is possibly the most lyrical film ever made. Valerie, a 13 year old staying with her grandmother while her parents are away has her first menstruation, triggering a series of interlocking dreams about lustful vampires who prey upon her youth. Despite the monstrous goings-on, the film is a buoyant and sensual pleasure to watch. The camera-work and composition never ceases to amaze and the energy of its tuneful folklike score propels the convoluted story forward effortlessly. And much credit should be given to Jaroslava Schallerova as Valerie who inhabits the role with the right balance of knowledge and wonder

Beautiful, disturbing, erotic, dreamlike... These are a few words that can sum up Jaromil Jires' deliriously bizarre fairy tale "Valerie and her Week of Wonders". Just like Richard Blackburn's sinister "Lemora", "Valerie" is a 'coming of age' tale told through a monstrous metaphor: vampires, who prey on the young to drain their innocence. Despite similarities theme-wise, these two films are quite different, and "Valerie" is certainly the most interesting of the two - a film that will definitely haunt you for life, with images so shocking today as they were back in 70's when it was released. It is 'horror' of rare ethereal beauty and poetry, and definitely one of it's kind - perfectly capturing the fear, the curiosity and the pleasure of a little girl's sexual awakening. Jaroslava Schallerová is spellbinding as the title character - a combination of Lewis Caroll's Alice and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Helena Anýzová also gives a harrowing performance in the role of the grandmother, and her gradual transition from repressed Catholic old lady to a seductive, sex-crazed vampire is exquisite. Last but not least, Jires' excellent direction and Jan Curik's lush cinematography that highlights the film's "fever dream" tone help create this brilliant work of art that captures the essence of the ethereal and lyricism on celluloid unlike any other.

A masterpiece of erotic confusion, Valerie comes as a delightful introduction to prolific Czechoslovakian director Jaromil Jires, whose career spans five decades. Jires blends reality and illusion to the extent that a synopsis does a disservice to the film, yet the literary story would work quite well on its own. Jaroslava Schallerovà, only 14 years old at the time, plays Valerie, a pretty young girl who lives with her grandmother in a beautiful yet antiseptic house. Her boyfriend (or perhaps brother), who goes by the name Eagle, sets off a chain of unusual events when he steals her earrings. A troupe of actors, or perhaps a wedding procession, comes into town, bringing with it a man who may be a monstrous vampire but may also be Valerie's father. Soon after Valerie's grandmother either disappears or dies, her Cousin Else shows up at the house and bears more than a striking resemblance to the grandmother (indeed, I believe these characters are played by the same actress). Things progress much along these lines, with eventually Valerie experiencing a major reawakening. Jires films in an impressively sensual manner, creating a mood through imagery rather than plot point. At times, however, the details get rather confusing, which can unfortunately shift attention from the beautiful composition and editing to deducing narrative developments. Many sequences appear to occur within the story but then end with the suggestion that they have just been imagined, introducing a need to constantly second-guess one's perceptions. Schallerovà plays the role with stunning (perhaps genuine) innocence. Without overindulged serenity, Valerie mystifies and befuddles through an agenda of symbol-soaked imagery and fantastic storytelling.