Valerie and her Week of Wonders 4/5

Valerie and her Week of Wonders

This was an oddity, and the first few minutes feel like some dodgy European softcore porn in how it plays, but you quickly get used to that, and it becomes a deeper movie, albeit reeking of sensuality, carnality and primal urges.

It’s quite beautiful in places, and lacking any clear coherency or relationship to reality. It was more a dream-composition, always hovering around the theme of awakening female sexuality, and showing imagery and sequences that seemed influenced by Alice in Wonderland, early surrealist movies like Age D’Or, and more obviously by 1922’s Nosferatu, and the more metaphysical work of Ingmar Bergman, and even, maybe the TV show The Prisoner.

I can also see it has either influenced or run a similar, parallel path to such movies as those by Jodorowsky (it reminded me of Santa Sangre), Daughters of Darkness, The Wicker Man.

A beautiful, odd movie.