‘100 Nights of Hero’ Review: A Mischievous Fairytale Laid Low by Its Withheld Approach
Resplendent in costume and production design, but shaky in overall execution, the star-studded fantasy romance “100 Nights of Hero” is the second feature from writer-director Julia Jackman. Based on the graphic novel by Isabel Greenberg, it takes its cues from “One Thousand and One Nights” (or “The Arabian Nights”) of West Asian folklore, responsible for such cultural mainstays as Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba. However, in Jackman’s movie, these narrative layers aren’t nearly as fantastical as their forebears from the Islamic Golden Age. They serve as thinly veiled extensions for their fictitious storyteller: a Scheherazade stand-in, whose queer reimagining works far better in theory than in practice.
The film initially features a mischievous spark, as Felicity Jones narrates the meta-textual origins of the subsequent story. A child with godlike powers, referred to as “kiddo” (Safia Oakley-Green) defies her carnivalesque father, “Birdman” (Richard E. Grant) by creating the world and its human inhabitants. This flourish of magical realism gives way to the central conceit and its Victorian dollhouse conception, as a melancholy woman named Cherry (Maika Monroe) is married off to the neglectful prince Jerome (Amir El-Masry), with the expectation of bearing an heir. Jerome, it turns out, isn’t interesting in consummating their union, even though he boasts otherwise. So, the blame for their lack off progeny falls on Cherry’s shoulders.
All the while, Cherry’s servant and loyal companion, the diligent, pixie-haired Hero (Emma Corrin), maintains a watchful eye and lends emotional support. When Jerome takes an extended leave of absence from his castle, he makes a wager with his scheming friend Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine), who sets out to seduce Cherry in his stead, in an effort to prove her infidelity. Cherry, it turns out, is taken with Manfred’s advances (and with Galitzine’s He-Man physique). But she remains conflicted, and thus, open to Cherry’s distractions, in the form of nightly stories about women in similar positions, ending on a cliffhanger every night. At least, that’s the intent.
Night after night, Hero’s yarns enchant the would-be couple — literally at times, as Hero appears to call on witchcraft, causing Manfred to lose all sense of days and weeks. This imbues the passageways of Jerome’s lush estate (guarded by masked figures) with a dreamlike quality. However, the fog that falls upon Manfred during these bedtime stories is rarely supported by the tales themselves. One follows a betrothed woman, Rosa (Charli XCX), in a remarkably familiar marital dilemma. Another is about Hero’s own mother, and the tales she once told Hero about her grandmother, who happens the Moon. Before long, these stories become bound by references to a secret society of storytellers, as the movie gestures towards the idea of narrative as a weapon in the face of gendered oppression. But these are glancing blows that barely land.
At the core of Hero’s tall tales is her own affection for Cherry, which is not altogether uninteresting, but neither the movie’s queer nor heterosexual pairings are ever presented with enough subdued passion to really light a fire under the film. Ironically, its story is far more told, in words, than actually felt, as the film spends much of its runtime circling its feminist themes rather than engaging with them head on, as a story of love and companionship beset by hegemonic structures. Its comedic flourishes are appropriately restrained, with humor seeping through its stilted compositions — picture an austere Wes Anderson — but its visual approach rarely evolves, even though the characters’ evolving dynamics demand aesthetic transformation. The camera seems hesitant to explore the movie’s picturesque world, as though tethered to the still panels of its comic source material; if the actors have romantic and sexual chemistry, they’re seldom allowed to explore it either.
The haziness that scatters the on-screen candles and other light sources gives it the appearance of a lurid fairytale. However, its human elements — its withheld, morose performances, and the distance with which they’re captured — render its characters’ alleged fervor, attraction and vigor mere theoretical concepts, rather than embodied impulses that either create a sense of allure, or justify the numerous overtures towards companionship and community as foundational rebellions against hetero-patriarchy. It’s a gorgeous-looking film, but a drag.
