Based on Isabel Greenberg’s eponymous graphic novel, Julia Jackman’s sophomore feature ‘evangelizes the beauty and importance of female solidarity, creative power, and defiance against oppression’, as insightfully put by Anna Miller for Collider. A delightful tribute to the fundamental role of storytelling and its revolt-inciting properties across generations, 100 Nights of Hero plays out like a feminist fairy tale that sees the blooming of a lesbian romance between a maid, Hero, and her mistress, Cherry, into a delicate, yet dissident flower.
Set in a fictitious world illuminated by three Moons, but eclipsed by the misogyny of the so-called Beaked Brothers – the worshippers of the Birdman deity, Jackman’s soft-spoken narrative unfolds with poise and a picture-book-like precision reflected in meticulously, and oft-symmetrically framed shots. With a keen eye and even keener sense of lighting and composition, DP Xenia Patricia captures the imaginatively stylized splendor of both sets (by Sofia Sacomani), and costumes (by Susie Coulthard) which are – decidedly – not a mere reconstruction of a specific historical period, but rather a bold, authentic mix of contemporary and pseudo-medieval fashion.
The film’s brilliant aesthetics – lent an extra oomph by the subtle campiness of the whole affair – evoke the fantasy sequences of Tarsem Singh’s The Fall, and to a certain degree, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s short The Capsule, posing as a spiritual successor to the former title. In accordance with the setting, women are restricted even by their own dresses, whereas men sport ‘free-spirited attire’, as Coulthard herself claims in a Vogue interview, and the above-mentioned brotherhood is ridiculed through their ritualistic masks and Inquisition-inspired robes. And the cast wearing the heavily symbolic designs does an admirable job, with the magnetic trio of Emma Corrin, Maika Monroe and Nicholas Galitzin (He-Man-to-be in the upcoming adaptation of the cult 80’s cartoon) as vertices of a strange love triangle.
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