Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

Director: Jaromil Jireš

1970 / 77min / 35mm

Adapting the 1935 novel of the same title by Vítězslav Nezval, co-founder of the Surrealist movement in Czechoslovakia, Ester Krumbachová and director Jireš scripted this free-associative fairy tale freak-out, a period piece with absolutely none of the corseted stiffness of the typical costume drama, which begins with its adolescent protagonist (Jaroslava Schallerová) having her first period then proceeds into an enigmatically plotted reverie filled with vampires, magic charms, predatory family members, and other staples of Gothic fantasy. An eclectic, enchanting score by Luboš Fišer and parade of sumptuously strange imagery lend Jireš’s film the atmosphere of a troubling dream that isn’t easily left behind, its anarchic approach to narrative and focus on female subjectivity recalling Krumbachová’s work on the screenplay for Daisies.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film Archive / Národní filmový archiv (Prague)