“100 Nights of Hero” starts with an imaginative burst of world-building. The goddess Kiddo has created the human race, viewing us as her sandbox (much like a player of “The Sims”). Her benevolent impulses are wrecked by her father, Birdman (Richard E. Grant), who turns her world into an altar to himself. Creating a religion devoted to his worship, he fills it with stained glass images of birds and monks dressed in avian beaks. He’s subverted his daughter’s imagination with one kind of story.
The heroes of queer British director Julia Jackman’s film — one literally named Hero (non-binary actor Emma Corrin) — push themselves towards a far different one. Jackman sets up a world of politely opulent luxury. Her fantasyland is an alternate version of medieval England, although even the poor don’t go hungry. “100 Nights of Hero” isn’t content merely to modernize fairy tales. It rewrites them to put queer women at the forefront. Its central impulse is about storytelling itself.
Cherry (Maika Monroe) lives with her husband Jerome (Amir El- Nasry), a wealthy lord, in a beautiful castle. While he’s expected to get her pregnant, he keeps passing up opportunities to have sex with her. Not very subtly, “100 Nights of Hero” implies that this reticence means he’s gay. His friend Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine) may as well come out with it, proposing Jerome prefers the company of handsome men to women. The lord has to go away on a business trip, so he makes a proposition to Manfred. Should he impregnate Cherry during this time, he’ll get possession of both the woman and castle. He fails to impress Cherry, while her maid Hero spends the 100 nights of Jerome’s absence relating a story to both of them.
Based on Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel, Jackman’s film keeps things relatively light, at least until the finale. Rated PG-13, it stays away from explicit sex. This fits the children’s story aspect, as well as Cherry’s own uncertainty about her desires. The narration intones “Hero is technically Cherry’s maid, but she’s so much more than that. She’s Cherry’s best friend.” The pause before “best friend” is pregnant with innuendo. “100 Nights of Hero” gets to the halfway point when both women start to approach each other. During sex with Manfred, Cherry reminisces about her experiences with Hero instead, finally coming to full recognition of her queerness. Monroe establishes Cherry’s naivete well, never overplaying it.
“100 Nights of Hero” is much more whimsical than laugh-out-loud funny. The ridiculousness of some of its characters, especially the men, is counter-balanced by the elegance with which they’re dressed. (If only the garish purple lighting flattered the costumes!) For quite a while, no one fully acknowledges the ugliness potentially facing Cherry, although portraits of the ex-wives Jerome had murdered hang in the castle.
“100 Nights of Hero” marks the acting debut of pop singer Charli XCX, who’s taken a deep dive into this new profession: She has six films on the way in 2026. Since her character Rosa has little to do, it’s hard to judge just how skilled she is. Rosa exists in a story-within-the-story related by Hero: she and her sisters discover the secret of literacy, learning to read and write even though it’s illegal. Cherry’s aware of them, but their tale has been distorted into one of villainous witches.
As Chat GPT decimates our literacy, this aspect of “100 Nights of Hero” has a certain bite, but it never gets below the surface of why women’s stories have been suppressed. Elsewhere, the film has trouble getting to the gravity it wants. Jerome turns out to be another villainous closeted gay man, devoid of any nuance. (Casting an Arab actor in this role brings other unfortunate implications.) For a long time, Hero seems to be present just to help Cherry along, despite her name. The film does introduce a complex backstory for her, but its grasp on characters who aren’t wealthy is shaky.
A YA sensibility keeps it from digging it deeper, while the film bites much of its style from Emerald Fennell. Although it’s not a frothy comedy, its cheer keeps the threat to Cherry and Hero from any real bite, as though there were a safety barrier protecting them. It can’t commit to its ending. Well-intentioned to a fault but unwilling to take real chances, “100 Nights of Hero” is queer cinema at its tamest.
“100 Nights of Hero” | Directed by Julia Jackman | Independent Film Company | Opens Dec. 3rd
