761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

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theflirtydozen
Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2014 4:21 pm

Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#26 Post by theflirtydozen » Sun May 31, 2015 3:44 pm

Thanks everyone for the help. I actually found one for €21 on amazon.de marketplace that ships internationally!

admira
Joined: Fri Nov 13, 2009 4:33 pm

Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#27 Post by admira » Fri Jun 26, 2015 3:24 am

Image
http://www.twistedspoon.com/valerie.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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bottled spider
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2009 2:59 am

Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#28 Post by bottled spider » Fri Jun 26, 2015 10:50 am

^ Thanks for that. I hadn't even realized the movie was an adaptation. I'll be ordering that for sure.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#29 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jul 01, 2015 11:33 am

domino harvey wrote:Mike D'Angelo outdoes himself (don't click, you'll be happier not reading it)
You knew we would HAVE to read MDA's review, given that sort of comment. ;-)

admira
Joined: Fri Nov 13, 2009 4:33 pm

Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#30 Post by admira » Wed Jul 01, 2015 12:01 pm

http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/2015 ... f-wonders/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

admira
Joined: Fri Nov 13, 2009 4:33 pm

Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#31 Post by admira » Wed Jul 01, 2015 12:04 pm

http://moviemezzanine.com/valerie-and-h ... rs-review/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

admira
Joined: Fri Nov 13, 2009 4:33 pm

Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#32 Post by admira » Fri Jul 03, 2015 5:44 am

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/68015/va ... f-wonders/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Rupert Pupkin
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 9:34 am

Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#33 Post by Rupert Pupkin » Fri Jul 03, 2015 11:58 pm

I just saw it yesterday...
I really enjoyed it (really, the actress was only 13 ? :-$ :oops: )
gorgeous restoration...
the movie is short... is really a trip-like movie and I wonder now if J.Demy saw it when he released just a year(?) later Peau d'Ane (aka Donkey Skin), because we found the same kind of beauty and eccentricity than in Donkey Skin (love the machine sequence in Valerie and all the pets)... and especially that there's incest everywhere in Valerie (I still don't know if her brother was really her brother because it changes everytime)... (the scene with her supposedly father is not suitable for children contrary to Donkey Skin which has some multiple layers lecture)

The extras are great : 3 great short movies : + the best extra IMHO is the alernate soundtrack : I really like early rock-progressive - it's something like King Crimson (the In The Court Of Crimson King) mixed with early Pink Floyd...
This band really did a tremendous job...
Too bad that the documentary with the band (very interesting) didn't feature a complete live performance of their set...

now after having read the booklet (no, that's a leaflet)- but they choose a nice paper to go with it (although some could said that if feels like recycled-toilet paper and perhaps they have gone a step further) I will watch again Marketa Lazarová...

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Minkin
Joined: Thu Aug 06, 2009 11:13 pm

Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#34 Post by Minkin » Wed Jul 08, 2015 5:32 pm

Rupert Pupkin wrote:The extras are great : 3 great short movies : + the best extra IMHO is the alernate soundtrack : I really like early rock-progressive - it's something like King Crimson (the In The Court Of Crimson King) mixed with early Pink Floyd...
I wasn't sure what I'd think about the alternate soundtrack, but now I'm sold!

Anyway, here is blu-ray.com's review

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movielocke
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 am

Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#35 Post by movielocke » Wed Jul 15, 2015 2:58 pm

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders defies easy categorization or description. The film is an elegant fevre dream of sexual awakening (in some respects) with omnipresent symbolism redolent of L'Age D'Or or Un Chien Andalou, with a touch of Dreyer and Murnau's Vampyr and Nosferatu. That said, the film hemorrhages around a narrative, evoking a dreamlike and ethereal quality to the pacing and editing that complements the same in the fascinating cinematography. The performances direction and score are all outstanding, but the film is more interesting and impressive--like those early Bunuel films--than it is impactful to me--In other words, I really enjoyed the film but was extremely frustrated I never connected to the film. Perhaps it is one that will need repeat viewings to really get it, but sometimes some films just don't connect for everyone.

The film opens on images of Valerie, a thirteen year old girl who has just experienced menarche, visually cued by delicate droplets of blood on some not-at-all symbolically white flowers. Symbolically looming male presences abound, taking on vampiric as well as cleric forms, indeed Valerie suddenly perceives life as having few trustworthy male figures around, other than the boyish Eaglet who aids her throughout the film. He is something of a love interest and something of a long-lost-sibling, maybe, the film quite brilliantly gives you the impression of folklore that has been mixed up and retold and repurposed into different-and-the-same-tales for hundreds of years. There's a sense of history to this telling, making you think perhaps there was once a version that had Eaglet as the love interest and another version that had Eaglet as her step brother, it lends the fable and telling of it a kind of faux authenticity of interweaving traditional tellings.

So it follows that Valerie's mother and her grandmother fluctuate as Eaglet does, and her father and the polecat fluctuate as well. Like a half remembered dream the film makes sense every step of the way at the time but defies any containing forces that attempt to organize and interpret it by stuffing into particular labels and boxes and categories. Fascinating and wonderful to watch, it's a film that will probably grow in stature as it is more available.

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Kokomo Blues
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Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#36 Post by Kokomo Blues » Fri Jul 17, 2015 10:03 am

movielocke wrote:Valerie and Her Week of Wonders defies easy categorization or description.
I was just thinking of this. Even though I don't like categorizing it occurred to me that there is a genre of films that deals with "signposts" along the maturing psychological life of children. And for girls it is typically handled through surrealism, fantasy or horror, or a mix.

You could stack Criterions up in terms of age and issues:

Forbidden Games Consciousness of Death
Zazie dans le métro Consciousness of intuition/precociousness
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders Sexual Consciousness
House Disruption of Family Relationships
Black Moon Confrontation of Societal Relationships

Even Moonrise Kingdom with issues of Independence and commitment.

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bottled spider
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Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#37 Post by bottled spider » Mon Jul 27, 2015 3:28 pm

Peter Hames mentions in his interview that Valerie parodies (or at least borrows the idioms of) film adaptations of Czech folktales, popular at the time, and favoured by the government for being politically innocuous. An example of such a film (albeit one that post-dates Valerie) is Three Wishes for Cinderella. It's a charming film in its own right, but perhaps also gives a feel for one of the genres Valerie toys with.

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movielocke
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 am

Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#38 Post by movielocke » Mon Aug 10, 2015 6:19 pm

bottled spider wrote:Peter Hames mentions in his interview that Valerie parodies (or at least borrows the idioms of) film adaptations of Czech folktales, popular at the time, and favoured by the government for being politically innocuous. An example of such a film (albeit one that post-dates Valerie) is Three Wishes for Cinderella. It's a charming film in its own right, but perhaps also gives a feel for one of the genres Valerie toys with.
I'm glad to hear my impression of fractured and fused folkloric traditions wasn't completely inappropriate.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 761 Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

#39 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Feb 26, 2020 3:26 pm

I've seen this maybe four times now and it always rises considerably on my all-time list after each viewing. Revisiting it again for the horror project only cemented its placement as my favorite of the Czech New Wave, or if not right up there with it. It's hard to write about a film that is not only a piece of technical magic in extravagant dressing from costumes, photography, set design, performance, and that insane score, but that is this wild and full of ideas to transform all those elements to a place of broad significance and affecting beauty that feels debilitating in its inexpressibility to capture such a feeling, and yet I feel compelled to try.

Is there anything more enchanting than this symbolic meditation on childhood development? A lot has been written about the mirroring of psycho-sexual stages, but I see this as only a part of the pie, the trigger that initiates an existential crisis around the evolution of identity. Valerie’s onset of her first menstrual cycle sets off a whirlwind of fears, doubts, insecurities, sensations, hopes, and perceptions, all represented in the hazy mix of this surrealist milieu that is allegorical but refuses specificity in focus. This is the film’s strength, for it perfectly captures this time of uncertainty and confusion, when we search for meaning and find it in illusions that are born from terrifying anxieties or pleasurable interests. And of course all representations have complicated significances: is the monster the unknown future of adulthood, or the theft of the past of childhood? Do the earrings’ ties to her mother actually hold value as familial relics, or is this a fantasy to feel connection through tangible means to another adult who shares the same blood, during a period of isolation and internalized distress; or are they even more broadly a physical creation of a tangible identity marker sans other party, in which to place her thin sense of security. The grandmother’s resentment feels like a coping mechanism, one of the many served on a platter that form the relationship between Valerie and uncontrollable forces that try to prevent her from her romantic conceptions and individuality. Paranoia, projection, escape, revolt all encompass the experience of the battle against the unknown to achieve resilience in survival. There are so many externalizations of inside complexities that I could probably watch this a hundred times and still find something new, but there is nothing as bold and honest as the idea of being in love with the monster that is the gateway to her death and life, the evil inside her and the godly forces that render her powerless, as well as to save her human love, rebel against her oppressive systems, revive the dead, and flee reality fueled by newfound empowerment. She is able to explore her sexuality in peace after an awakening through her accomplishments, forging a confidence resembling self-actualization (less than half the age before this is sustained in the developmental cycle, but achieved in incremental doses along the way - oh the power of fantasy!)

How wonderful is it to attempt to grasp the idea of fear itself and make it both your lover and enemy, to take control of your own narrative with subjective entitlement, merging the corporeal and spiritual symbols of family and monster together to form a relationship between the familiar and the mystery? That’s the power we have, the existentialist’s dream of meaning, and Valerie’s talent for making sense of her experience through a form of confrontation rather than retreat. Some may say that fantasy is a form of flight, but is it actually maladaptive, or a form of art we can express with our minds to adapt to our growth in a world we don’t understand? It’s also a movie, a great one, and as far as films that utilize horror to express ineffable universal life experiences through visual means, this is a lovely twisted fairy tale mimicking such psychology as good as any I’ve seen. That Valerie makes the decision to return to reality once she feels prepared is the bravest move she could possibly make, facing the inevitable, and proof of the power of the art of the dream as the best tool for making meaning from our experiences. And of course we, like she, can slip right back in on our will, because part of what life is about is fantasy. Valerie’s sensual, serene, and awe-struck contentment with the wild wonders of this world at the end is as good a place as one can be in at her age, or hell any age.

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