There’s a Good Reason Why This Dark, Surrealistic Cinematic Fairytale Is One of the Most Revered Cult Movies of All Time
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders boasts a unique plot and refreshingly depicts the bittersweet place between childhood and inevitable adulthood.
The 70s were a great decade for surrealistic motives and imagery in genre films—including such incredible gems as Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain, Louis Malle's Black Moon and Dario Argento's Suspiria. And then came another great example of surrealist cinema out of Eastern Europe in the form of Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Directed by Jaromil Jires, it was a part of the Czechoslovakian New Wave, but came off as avant-garde and daring even for this pretty liberated movement. The film did face its fair share of obstacles, but ended up reaching a worldwide audience that had seen many versions of a coming-of-age story by that time. However, none of them tackled this topic like this: depicting the weird place between innocent childhood and inevitable adulthood, specifically shown through the perspective of female experience, in such an uncompromisingly surreal way.
