Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

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.

This is one of the most astounding films I have ever seen, both visually and in terms of narrative. It consists of at least two stories (a young girl becoming a woman, a vampire story) layered on top of each other with a kind of dream-logic. It looks a dream as well. A cleaned-up DVD edition would be nice, though.

Some viewers may be offended by its' oedipal imagery, but for me this is perhaps the best fantasy-movie ever. Great actors too. It would be interesting to know if any of the people involved in this made anything as good again. A solid ten.

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

Valerie is living with her grandmother and experiencing menarche, which triggers a series of dreams (or is it reality?) involving a vampire (or is her father?), a potential suitor (or is it her brother?), a long-lost cousin (or is it her rejuvenated grandmother-turned-vampire?). "Valerie" is a confusing and surreal film that is alternates between beautiful and nightmarish. The teenager who plays Valerie is pretty in an offbeat Bjorkish way, and an exceptional actress. I have a feeling this one gets better with subsequent viewings. Even though it is just over an hour long, the visuals are almost too much to take in all at once. Check it out if you are interested in seeing a bizarre and unique vampire film.

My Rating: 6.5/10.

In the 1960s British TV screened a good number of European Fairy tales like 'The Singing Ringing Tree' for children (probably because they were cheap product). They were often strange and grotesque evoking a real sense of the uncanny nature of pre-sanitised fairy tales. Valerie and Her Weeks of Wonders is made in this vein. Redemption may market the film as a 'virgin comes into sexuality' 70s softcore film, but it offers something more than this. There is an enormous amount of care taken in the film's visual composition and the music. Standing on the border between horror and fairy tale it brings out the latent combination of erotic desire, aggression and fantasy that links the two genres. At times the film borders on the sublime with its evocation of dreamlike imagery. Centred around Valerie's quest to discover the identity of her parents they are revealed to be duplicitous shape changers - at one moment a handsome man or woman and the next a hideous vampire beast. Eschewing the rules of Hollywood linearity and character continuity this film re-creates subjective space and affords us a welcome space in which to dream.