You are here:

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

Name: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Director: Jaromil Jireš
Released: 1970
Duration: 73 min

Representation Score

7.9/10

Good

1970

Not Rated

Director

Jaromil Jireš

Runtime

73 minutes

Average Rating

No ratings yet

New Showbiz Analysis

Jaromil Jireš’s surrealist masterpiece excels in its subversion of gender hierarchies. By centering Valerie’s sexual awakening as a transformative power, the film avoids the traditional male gaze and empowers its female protagonist. However, the film remains limited by its culturally homogeneous, folkloric setting. The focus on mythic archetypes results in a lack of racial and ethnic diversity, keeping the aesthetic strictly within a specific European tradition. While the film offers sophisticated deconstructions of social norms and religious authority, it lacks meaningful representation of physical or neurodivergent disabilities, treating sensory shifts primarily as magical plot devices.

Watch this, not that →

Category Breakdown

Does Valerie and Her Week of Wonders have LGBTQ+ representation?

Good

The film explores desire through a lens of fluidity rather than fixed identities. It uses non-linear attraction and homoerotic imagery to challenge traditional expectations.

How does Valerie and Her Week of Wonders portray gender?

Excellent

Valerie acts as the central driver of her own psychological journey. The film challenges patriarchal structures by portraying male figures as predatory or unstable while centering the female experience.

How racially and ethnically diverse is Valerie and Her Week of Wonders?

Limited

The setting maintains a culturally homogeneous European aesthetic. It prioritizes mythic archetypes over sociological realism, lacking significant evidence of racial blending or diverse casting.

How does Valerie and Her Week of Wonders represent religion and culture?

Good

The narrative expresses skepticism toward traditional Western institutions. It portrays religious authority and familial structures as sites of potential corruption or confusion through a blurred, subjective reality.

Does Valerie and Her Week of Wonders include disability representation?

Fair

The story focuses on sensory and psychological shifts rather than physical representation. While magic earrings alter perception, these shifts function as aesthetic elements rather than grounded disability explorations.

Present on Screen

Strong subversion of patriarchal structures and gender hierarchies.
Sophisticated exploration of desire through fluid, non-linear imagery.
Critical deconstruction of traditional religious and familial institutions.

Limited or Absent

Lack of racial and ethnic diversity within the homogeneous setting.
Absence of grounded representation for physical or neurodivergent disabilities.

Official Synopsis

Valerie, a Czechoslovakian teenager living with her grandmother, is blossoming into womanhood, but that transformation proves secondary to the effects she experiences when she puts on a pair of magic earrings. Now seeing the world around her in a different light, Valerie must endure her sexual awakening while attempting to discern reality from fantasy as she encounters lecherous priest Gracian, a vampire-like stranger and otherworldly carnival folk.

How are these scores produced? →