Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is the kind of film that feels less like a story you follow and more like a dream you wander through—lush, mischievous, and startlingly alive, with images that linger like half-remembered fairy tales. Jaromil Jireš stages adolescence as a gothic carnival of desire and danger, where sunlight can look enchanted and authority figures wear the most sinister masks, all shot with a painter’s eye for color, texture, and uncanny beauty. The tone is playful and anticlerical without turning preachy, brimming with surreal energy that keeps you slightly off-balance in the best way, never quite sure what’s metaphor, what’s magic, and what’s menace. It’s not for everyone—its erotic charge and unsettling themes can be a lot—but if you’re open to audacious, poetic cinema that trusts atmosphere over explanations, this is a small masterpiece of cinematic spellcraft.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is trying to be a dreamy, fairy-tale fever dream about adolescence—sexual awakening, religious hypocrisy, and predatory adults—told through surreal imagery rather than tidy storytelling. If you need clear rules, coherent plot logic, or characters who behave like real people, this will feel maddeningly opaque and “weird for the sake of weird,” with a kitschy, theatrical tone that can come off more fey than frightening. It’s also not a casual watch: the film leans hard into erotic menace and taboo-adjacent situations involving a young teen, so even viewers who appreciate arthouse fantasy may find the vibe unsettling in a way that isn’t entertaining. That said, if you’re in the mood for striking visuals, eerie folklore atmosphere, and symbolism you’re meant to feel more than fully decode, it can be a uniquely hypnotic trip—just don’t expect it to make conventional sense.