Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a coming of age film about a young girl named Valerie. The film was released in 1970 and takes place in a small town in the Czech Republic, where Valerie meets all kinds of peculiar characters who would shape the person she later becomes. Surrealist, unsettling and quite unorthodox, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders was influenced largely by the Czechoslovakian culture of the 60’s and 70’s and the Soviet Union’s crackdown on liberal reformists who fought to end the censorship and suppression of individual beliefs through artistic expression.
Two years before this film was released, the Czech Republic was still under the influence of the Soviet Union and the first Secretary of the Communist Party Alexander Dubcek led Czechoslovakia into a period known as the Prague Spring. During this period, artists were given more freedom to express themselves, and censorship of poems, fiction, and films that did not coincide with the Communist ideology enforced by the Soviet Union became more lax. In the same year, an invasion was led by the USSR in an attempt to end the freedom of artistic expression and liberal reform that threatened their totalitarian rule. However, artistic expression could never be erased completely from the Czech Republic and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a perfect example of a film that undermined Communist authority. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is about a girl who is constantly fighting for her freedom as she transforms into a woman, which she ultimately wins by the end of the film. The antagonists in this film take advantage of her innocence and use the power they’ve cultivated to strip her of her own. Viewers can draw parallels between the Soviet Union's enforced communist doctrines over the Czech Republic and the film itself, where a nation and a developing girl both fight for a voice and a right to grow and explore on their own. The film is unique in the way that it represents the period of Artists rebelling against the authority of the Soviet Union known as the Prague Spring, and is full of beautiful imagery and symbolism. However, it is not exempt from criticism simply because of this. It is actually quite unsettling and in many ways an unethical film.
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a horror meets coming of age film that begins right when our main character,Valerie, starts to go through a period of transformation into womanhood. This transformation is shown through slightly contrived but beautiful symbolism, most importantly, the flower shaped earrings she wears that represent her blossoming into a mature adult woman. Though the film lacks a linear plot, it deals with touchy themes such as assault, misuse of power, and exploration through different romantic partners, all while in a gothic fantasy world full of vampires and witches. The movie's claim to fame is its dreamlike aesthetic and muddled plot, both of which make the viewer doubt whether or not anything they're watching is really happening to Valerie or if they’re instead lost in her subconscious or a dream of hers in which monsters and companions alike roam free. But aesthetics alone are not enough to save this movie.
The irony of “Valerie and Her Week of Wonders'' is that while the movie is about the unjust exploitation of Valerie by men more powerful and older than herself, it’s also exploiting the actor who plays Valerie, Jaroslava Schallerová. Valerie is usually shot through the male gaze, which is quite unsettling when she and the actor playing her were both the same age, thirteen. There are more than a couple scenes I found almost unbearable to watch that would never have made it to audiences today featuring Valerie, and some I even had to skip over where she wasn't fully clothed. Many of the scenes I was able to sit through were just close ups of a blank faced Jaroslava that didn’t contribute to building her into a fleshed out and emotionally complex character. What’s more alarming is that Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is based off of a book by Vitezslav Nezval in which the main character Valerie is seventeen not thirteen. I actually began to feel guilty while watching this film. The viewer is seeing this thirteen year old girl through the male gaze for an hour or so, not so subtlety being exploited and over sexualized. It feels almost as though you the viewer are complicit in this exploitation. Aside from this very disturbing aspect of the film, Valerie's romantic relationships are also just as easily as uncomfortable to watch. Some are in fact so disturbing and unorthodox they’d make Freud himself blush. Furthermore, though aesthetically pleasing, I feel this film could benefit from a more thought out and clear plot. I understand that an important part of this film is it’s dreamlike quality and jumbled storyline, but putting too much emphasis on aesthetics as we learned from Empire of the Sun can undermine the message a filmmaker is trying to send, sometimes to the point where it’s completely lost.
Some of the best films are ones that leave you with a million questions after watching them, but Valerie and Her Week of Wonders just felt like one big question mark. Jaromil Jireš,
the director of Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, includes many long winded scenes that are either bewildering or aesthetically pleasing, while hardly taking the time to focus on the important subjects that are brought up in the film, like assault and victim blaming. In the end, what could have been an empowering film ended up being a film that wanted a little too badly to be avant garde.
When I first read about Valerie and Her Week of WondersI immediately wanted to watch it, as it was framed as an ingenious surrealist film with feminist themes, but upon watching it my excitement diminished. Perhaps if you're studying film history or interested in this niche category of horror mixed with teenage exploration Valerie and Her Week of Wonderswill have something to offer you. In my case, the film was simply too disturbing to enjoy. Of course it's cinematography is beautiful and nuanced, but no amount of pretty shots and creative symbolism can make up for a movie as problematic as this one. Yes, this film was made during an explorative time and may have been trying to showcase one’s individual style and creativity, but I don’t think that justifies the oversexualization of Valerie. This film is incredibly idiosyncratic, and opinions on it vary greatly. Some people would argue that this film is still a masterpiece, and empowering, so it’s up to you whether you choose to watch it or not. However, if you do decide to, you should be prepared for all the bizarre and uncomfortable scenes that come with it.