Wonder Woman

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) is an odd little movie. It would make a good double bill with The Company of Wolves. Both are sort of surreal, non-linear fairy tales about girls entering womanhood. But Valerie mainly deals with vampire stories, not werewolves.

It starts in a dream, like Wolves. Valerie, played by 13-year old Jaroslava Schallerova, is drowsing in the greenhouse of her grandmother's house, when a boy lowers himself down through a skylight to steal her earrings. When she tries to get them back, she finds a horrible old man in a Nosferatu mask. Under that mask, his face is creepy and ugly - or is it another mask? The old man is known as the Constable, and the boy, Eaglet, is is nephew and ward, and possibly thrall.

Later, Valerie's grandmother tells her that the earrings were given to her by her mother, who left to join a convent. She also tells her that they were just some junk she found in the house when she bought it from the Constable. We hear a lot of stories, and see things that contradict each other. The Constable takes Valerie to a crypt and makes her look through a crack in the wall, where she sees her grandmother beg a priest to take her back as her lover, and whip herself. The priest may be the Constable, under his masks.

Or are the Constable and his Eaglet part of the troupe of actors and mountebanks travelling through town? Is the priest the same as the one who leads the nuns through the country, where the grown up woman sport with men?

The Constable agrees to make Grandmother young again in exchange for his old house - by turning her into a vampire! Grandmother then starts to suck the life force from a young married couple - the same who were playing in the fields? Valerie sleeps with the bride and restores her health, but the people brand her a witch and burn her at the stake! But she swallows one of her earrings, and the flames don't hurt her - she just laughs and sticks out her tongue at them.

It all ends with everyone dancing in the woods around Valerie as she sleeps, and then they depart, leaving her alone.

Czech director Jaromil Jires weaves fairytales, horror stories, and a girl's awakening womanhood into a dreamlike tale. I feel like Wolves does this a little more successfully, possibly because it is written by an actual woman.