Review: Vaguely fantastical without ever being fantastic, '100 Nights of Hero' is less than magical
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“Are you ready? Then we shall begin.”This narration, over an image of three moons hanging in the sky, begins Julia Jackman’s “100 Nights of Hero,” which she adapted from Isabel Greenberg’s 2016 graphic novel and directed.It signifies that we’re in for a level of heightened, self-reflective fantasy storytelling and, in fact, the revolutionary power of storytelling itself is the beating heart of this film.Jackman takes her own stylistic approach to “100 Nights of Hero” without replicating Greenberg’s aesthetic.
You can almost immediately tell this fantastical film has a feminine touch in its colorful, highly stylized look and sound; there’s a certain girlish wit in the vibrant pink hues and the centering of women’s narratives within the mannered compositions.The setting is a secluded, cult-like community that reveres their god, Birdman (Richard E.
Grant, in a cameo), and fashions their patriarchal society around the usual tenets: controlling women, producing heirs.Young bride Cherry (Maika Monroe) is married to Jerome (Amir El-Masry) and though he claims they are trying to have a baby, he is not.Too bad she’s the one who will suffer the consequences of failing to get pregnant.
Soon, the hunky Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine) shows up and the two men engage in a cruel bet: Manfred has 100 nights alone in the castle to seduce Cherry while Jerome is away on business.If he fails, he has to find a baby for Jerome, who is uninterested in sex with women.
If Manfred succeeds, he gets the castle.But if Cherry strays, she hangs.
(It’s a lose-lose situation for the wife, as expected.)Cherry has one person on her side, Hero (Emma Corrin), her cunning maid, who distracts Manfred from his goal by telling the story of three sisters who engage in the “sinful, wicked and absolutely forbidden” (for women) pleasure of reading and writing.One of the sisters, Rosa (Char...