Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Borserie it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

morrison-dylan-fan Years before seeing my first Czech movie I had heard of Valerie as a famous Horror title,which led to me picking up the DVD,but for some reason never getting round to watching it! Deciding to spend April watching one Czech film a day,I decided it was time experience a week of wonder.The plot:Waking up,Valerie finds that her earrings have been stolen.Searching around town for the thief,Valerie runs into a strange looking man with a mask.The next day Valerie discovers that the robber has returned her earrings.Due to the earrings belonging to her mum,Valerie (who is having her first period) decides to ask her grandmother Elsa about the earrings and her parents (who left her with Elsa years ago.)Learning some mysterious family history,and getting told that a group of actors are going to visit the town,Valerie gets ready for a week of wonder.View on the film:Complementing the movie with interesting extras,Second Run give the film a transfer whose audio and picture quality shines like crystals.Making her debut after beating 1,500 other actresses in the auditions, Jaroslava Schallerová gives a spellbinding performance as Valerie,with Schallerová wrapping Valerie in a delicate innocence which crumbles as she explores her womanhood.Showing a masterful touch well beyond her years, Schallerová expresses Valerie's sensuality in an expertly subtle manner,by making Valerie's naïve girlhood belief transform into something much more mature.Taking on multiple roles,the stylish Helena Anýzová gives incredibly distinctive performances as Babicka ,Elsa , Matka and Rusovláska!,each of whom are given unique qualities by Anýzová,which are carefully threaded round the entwining tale.Backed by a mythical score from Lubos Fiser,co-writer/(along with Ester Krumbachová and Jirí Musil) director Jaromil Jires & cinematographer Jan Curík spend the week soaking the screen in wondrous images.Covering pure white flowers in the blood of Valerie,Jires conjures Valerie's world with a hauntingly magical atmosphere,where the lavish,ultra-stylised vibrant colours of Valerie's childhood are overcast by rugged vampires, betraying weasels and decaying nightmares.Whilst not making an overtly political spell over their adaptation of Vítezslav Nezval,the screenplay by Jires/Krumbachová & Musil does rub an abrasive shoulder against the Soviet Union's idea of unity,due to Valerie battling to explore her most individualistic features.Weaving their fairy tale with transformations and sharp- toothed vampires,the writers weave Valerie's horrors with a fascinating psychological nightmare,thanks to the writers displaying an expert eye for each scene to be seen in two ways,from the eerie Gothic Horror shine being a canvas for a Freudian exploration in Valerie's loss of pure white flowers into being surrounded by the long,engulfing shadows of adulthood,as Valerie starts a new week of wonder.

Hammerfanatic46 It is best not to attempt to "understand" this surreal masterpiece on an intellectual level. How can anyone comprehend the thoughts ,fantasies ,dreams and emotions of a young girl on the threshold of womanhood ? Instead ,I would suggest that you simply drift downstream with the movie ,allowing it to carry you where it may.Based on a Czech novel which seeks to examine Gothic themes in the light of Freudian psychology , it is most of all a visual feast in which every scene is a ravishingly beautiful composition. The dream-like quality is enhanced by the hauntingly atmospheric music and outstanding performances. Paramount among them is that of Jaroslava Schallerova as the titular character , even more astonishing when one remembers that she was only 14 at the time.Viewing "Valerie" is tinged with more than a little sadness when one considers that it was made shortly after the brutal crushing of the "Prague Spring " by the invading Soviet tanks. Tragic to think that the creative talents involved in this film would be destined to spend their careers stifled by Stalinist conformism.

Johan Louwet I was thinking this movie was going to be a lot like "The Company of Wolves", a movie I love. It turned out pretty differently.The Company of Wolves. Despite having symbolism and much of it being a dream/fantasy of a adolescent girl it also had a storyline and an incredible fairy tale setting.Valerie and her Week of Wonders. From the moment I saw pretty main character Valerie I knew I was in for a visual treat. The only thing in a narrative way that I'm really sure of is that she got her periods for the first time. The rest of the movie looks much like a dream. Fairy tale esque village and woods, fountains, pretty girls in white dresses, vampires, high level of sensuality, kissing, touching (not shying away from things that looked incestuous and lesbianism) even a bit of nudity.The story it didn't make much sense, I think it was after all a dream (and how often does a dream make sense?) and the viewer is free to give its own interpretation to it. Even though I usually like a pretty clear storyline I did like this movie. For some reason whatever Valerie did, experienced or observed it was never boring. I'm sure on a re-watch I'll gain even more from it.

xenophile2002 Often I get things I've wanted to see for some time, but for one reason or another never did. Or something I've seen before, but it was a long time ago, and I'd like to see again. Especially if there are DVD extras I HAVEN'T seen.Sometimes, though, I like to get something I've never heard of, something which the blurb makes sound interesting, something which seems like it *might* be the sort of thing I might like, but which is a bit of a risk. Sometimes this results in my mailbox sagging from the dead weight of a real clunker, and I find myself wishing I hadn't been so adventurous.But sometimes I wind up seeing something like _Valerie and Her Week of Wonders_, and I'm glad that I *was* adventurous. This easily makes up for the last clunker, no, for the last TWO clunkers I got in red envelopes.Is Valerie dreaming? For somebody being burned at the stake, this barely-teen seems rather unconcerned. Is her father a dead bishop, a vampire, or the Weasel? Or is the vampire a bishop? Or is the bishop the Weasel? Is Eagle her boyfriend? Her brother? Is her mother not really dead, or is it that her cousin? How did she know that her cousin is actually...Can Valerie evade lusty priests, incest which maybe isn't, and beware the Weasel? Can the girl ever get a good night's sleep? Or is she getting exactly that, now?