Valerie – Eine Woche voller Wunder (1970)

Valerie – Eine Woche voller Wunder: Directed by Jaromil Jires. With Jaroslava Schallerová, Helena Anýzová, Petr Kopriva, Jirí Prýmek. Inspired by fairytales such as Alice in Wonderland and Little Red Riding Hood, is a surreal tale in which love, fear, sex and religion merge into one fantastic world.

“In the 1960s British TV screened a good number of European Fairy tales like u0026#39;The Singing Ringing Treeu0026#39; for children (probably because they were cheap product). They were often strange and grotesque evoking a real sense of the uncanny nature of pre-sanitised fairy tales. Valerie and Her Weeks of Wonders is made in this vein. Redemption may market the film as a u0026#39;virgin comes into sexualityu0026#39; 70s softcore film, but it offers something more than this. There is an enormous amount of care taken in the filmu0026#39;s visual composition and the music. Standing on the border between horror and fairy tale it brings out the latent combination of erotic desire, aggression and fantasy that links the two genres. At times the film borders on the sublime with its evocation of dreamlike imagery. Centred around Valerieu0026#39;s quest to discover the identity of her parents they are revealed to be duplicitous shape changers – at one moment a handsome man or woman and the next a hideous vampire beast. Eschewing the rules of Hollywood linearity and character continuity this film re-creates subjective space and affords us a welcome space in which to dream.”