Set in an alternative past in which the world worships a god named Birdman (personified by Richard E. Grant, naturally), who has a mischievous daughter named Kiddo (Safia Oakley-Green) and creates a world of humans living under a set of restrictive rules that seem designed to keep women down, forbidding such things as them learning to read and write. Taking a page from fairy tales and The Arabian Nights, 100 Nights of Hero tells the story of a young, devout woman named Cherry (Maika Monroe), who marries Jerome (Amir El-Masry), a man claiming he's trying to impregnate her on a nightly basis. In fact, he has yet to consummate the marriage, preferring instead to keep the company of his strapping male friends, such as his pal Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine, Bottoms and Red, White & Royal Blue), who arrives late one night looking for a place to stay for a time.
In the Birdman religion, we learn, if a woman fails to conceive within a designated period, the husband can have her killed and replaced for a more suitable, fertile model. The church elders give Cherry 100 days to show signs of pregnancy, and naturally her husband announces that he’s being called away on business just at that moment, leaving her in a bit of a panicked state.
But before he leaves, he makes a bet with Manfred that Manfred can’t seduce his chaste wife, figuring that if his handsome, swarthy friend does seduce her, he might get an heir after all. If he doesn’t...well, that’s okay too. Determined to resist, Cherry enlists the help of her devoted maid, Hero (Emma Corrin, Nosferatu, Deadpool and Wolverine), who is a masterful storyteller and is summoned whenever Manfred is getting close to sweeping Cherry off her feet to continue the lengthy but highly engaging stories that have direct parallels to Cherry’s own dilemma, including one about a young woman (Charlie XCX) hiding the fact that she can read and write from her husband.
Hero’s abilities may also stray into witchcraft as she makes Manfred forget all sense of passing time, and we also find out she knows something of Cherry’s mysterious past and her mother’s heroic story. With her second feature film, writer-director Julia Jackman (Bonus Track) gives us a thinly veiled, homoerotic yarn that has just enough winking, modern knowing that it’s not too difficult to spot the present-day equivalencies. But it’s also a celebration of storytelling as an art form and a gender-specific tool against oppression. These clunky messages don’t always land with any degree of subtlety, but why should they?
The film has a visual language that is strikingly beautiful, and the story never takes itself too seriously, never missing an opportunity to remind us that Manfred’s rather obvious, lustful passes at Cherry are way off base when it comes to her sexual inclinations. There’s a rather funny cameo by Felicity Jones at the end of the film (although she’s also the film’s narrator) that adds to 100 Nights of Hero’s atmosphere as a handsome trifle of a work. It’s difficult not to fall under the spell of Corrin’s intense glare as she reminds us that the feminist implications of the stories she spins are quite weighty.
The film is now being screened in theaters.
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