Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

This pivotal title from Czech New Wave is also perhaps the region's most important contribution to worldwide fantastic cinema, a dreamlike reverie on the perils and pleasures of a girl's passage into womanhood. The Valerie of the title, played by Jaroslava Schallerová, is a pubescent village girl whose straitlaced grandmother (Helena Anýzová) has taught her little about the ways of the world. Their family farm offers a few lessons about letting your guard down (with an invading weasel providing a bit of wry symbolism), and she gets her first really meaningful contact with a young man courtesy of Eagle (Petr Kopriva), a vulnerable youth bullied by many in the village. More strangely, Valerie's cousin suddenly appears after her grandmother's disappearance and seems to look oddly familiar. Even worse, the new arrival also appears to be a vampire. Based very closely on a fantasy novel by Vítezslav Nezval (author of Jirí Trnka's 1949 film, The Emperor's Nightingale), which was only published in English fairly recently, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders reached American shores four years after its initial Czech release courtesy of Janus Films. Though it was difficult to see in a decent print for decades, its reputation continued to grow and its influence is still being felt in the growing numbers of horror and fantasy films told from the perspective of young women coming of age. In fact, as recently as the American special edition reissue of the cult film Ginger Snaps (2000), Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is singled out as ground zero for the later films conflating the monstrous, the feminine, and the adolescent, most notably in Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973), Carrie (1976), The Company of Wolves (1984) and Excision (2012). A major figure in the history of the Czech New Wave, director Jaromil Jires had a knack for slipping subversive and even shocking material into his films under the noses of censors. There isn't any overt political content in this film, though the casual (and comparatively chaste) moments of nudity and some implied lesbian incest can still come as a surprise today. Perhaps his other best-known film among English-speaking audiences is The Joke (1969), which is far more political in content and was included in Criterion's Pearls of the Czech New Wave DVD set. Though it stayed out of the home video market for many years after its original run, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders managed to find an enduring life among fans thanks to both word of mouth and revival screenings. It even enjoyed a limited theatrical reissue in 2001 with restored new 35mm prints converting a new generation of converts, though sadly the only watchable home video versions have been released overseas. Another interesting wrinkle in the film's history occurred in 2007 when The Valerie Project, a newly-formed Philadelphia band consisting of members of other groups like Espers and Fern Knight, turned the film into a live event by screening it with a newly-composed psychedelic folk score. The touring show became an attraction at many venues including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, with an album release tying in with the live engagements. Trish Keenan, the late lead singer of the English band Broadcast, also paid tribute to the film with her song "Valerie" and its accompanying music video. Who else it impacts in upcoming years as its influence continues to evolve should be fascinating to see. By Nathaniel Thompson