Valerie and Her Week of Wonders dir. Jaromil Jireš

“Valerie and Her Week of Wonders” / dir. Jaromil Jireš / feature film / 1970 / 117 min. / Czechoslovakia

Although Jaromil Jireš spent the 1960s creating realist cinema, in 1970 he presented a fantastical work, styled to an extreme degree, that marks a precedent in his filmography. After adapting Milan Kundera’s novel *The Joke*, Jireš turned once again to literary adaptation, this time drawing from the work of Vítězslav Nezval. Along with the artist Ester Krumbachová, he adapted the poetic, dark novel *Valerie and Her Week of Wonders* from 1935 into a screenplay. As the title suggests, the film portrays a week in the life of a 13-year-old girl, illustrating the heroine’s transformation into a woman. In Jireš’s experimental visual approach, the child’s perspective of the world intertwines with an adult’s viewpoint, and reality blends with fantasy, evident in the fluidity of the characters. This surreal film shows influences of the horror and erotic romance genres.