Stories shape us. They mold our morality, sculpt our vision of love, and chart the trajectories of our lives. For centuries, Western culture and its stories have fed us a narrow vision of the “happy ending.” From Shakespearean comedies to Disney fairy tales, the sign of a life well lived is so often a woman standing by a man, vowing to obey and sealed with wedding bells. That well-worn formula has provided comfort, but it has also upheld a system that stifles imagination and leaves little room for other visions of fulfillment.
Julia Jackman’s sophomore feature “100 Nights of Hero” is a luminous rebuttal to that tradition: a layered, playful, and poignant reminder that stories themselves can be acts of resistance.
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Adapted from Isabel Greenberg’s award-winning graphic novel, the film is already doubly steeped in history. Greenberg’s book drew inspiration from “One Thousand and One Nights,” that cornerstone of the Islamic Golden Age in which Sheherazade is married to a man who kills his wives a day post matrimony, but ingeniously manages to stay alive by telling him such engaging stories each night that he cannot bear to end her life and cease hearing more of them.
Jackman keeps that inheritance intact, similarly flipping the romantic tale script by beginning not with flirtation or longing, but with a wedding. Cherry (Maika Monroe) enters matrimony resplendent in white, her fate tied to Jerome (Amir El-Masry), a man who is wealthy and handsome but also a sociopath with bad breath. Jerome refuses to consummate the marriage, dooming Cherry to fail to provide an heir and suffer the same ignominious fate suffered by Janet the Barren, Sara the Unfaithful, and Nadia the Lesbian. The narration tells us what Cherry already senses: the consequences of Jerome’s cruelty will never be his to bear.
Trapped in a gilded cage, Cherry finds her only solace in her maid, Hero (Emma Corrin). Their relationship, quiet at first, grows more urgent when Jerome departs for a protracted trip and leaves Cherry in the company of his boorish friend Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine). Manfred, fresh from murdering his wife for supposed infidelity, joins Jerome in declaring there are “no good women.” The pair make a wager: Jerome will leave to attend to some business affairs for 100 nights and Manfred will attempt to seduce Cherry. If she resists, she lives. If she succumbs, she perishes and Manfred wins Jerome’s castle. The set-up could easily slip into grim melodrama, but Jackman infuses it with a pop-tastic fun.
Hero is unaware of the wager but knows something is amiss and protects Cherry the only way she can: by telling stories. Each night, she unfurls the saga of Rosa (pop star Charli XCX, in a surprising subtle and effective turn) and her two sisters, women who defied patriarchal expectations and endured the consequences. The parallels between the stories are more than narrative gamesmanship; they deepen each other. Through Rosa’s rebellion, Cherry glimpses the possibility of resisting her own fate. Storytelling becomes not mere diversion but a weapon, a means of survival, and — most movingly — an avenue for Cherry to discover her true desires.
If the themes sound melancholy, Jackman ensures the execution is never dour. The film is alive with stylistic playfulness. Visually, it occupies a world that is both medieval and futuristic, equal parts illuminated manuscript, haute couture runway, and neon-soaked dreamscape drenched in “bisexual lighting.” Each composition bathes Cherry and Hero in lush hues that mirror their growing intimacy. Costuming is another triumph: Cherry and Hero’s headpieces fold with the precision of origami, while the ornate masks of the Birdman’s followers look like they’ve been plucked directly from an ornately illustrated fairy tale rarely brought to life with such aplomb in an independent film. The tactile pleasure of these details anchors the fantasy in material beauty.
Performances in the film are uniformly strong, but Emma Corrin emerges as the film’s linchpin. Known for their finely tuned portrayals of heartbreak and anguish, they reveal here a surprising gift for comedy. Thanks to the film’s brisk editing, Corrin’s deadpan reactions to the men’s pompous bluster land as perfectly timed punchlines. Galitzine, meanwhile, delivers Manfred as a cursed-himbo parody of the bodice-ripper archetype, forever flaunting his bloodied torso while proclaiming that men only want women who are “beautiful, chaste, good at listening and mending socks … interested in maps, falconry, chess, etc., but obviously not too good at them.” The line is absurd, but it’s also depressingly recognizable for anyone who has spent any time on a dating app, and Jackman wrings both laughter and groans from the moment.
Monroe, tasked with embodying Cherry’s transformation, gives a quietly affecting performance that blossoms into something radiant as her bond with Hero strengthens. Their relationship, tentative, intimate, and defiant, lingers long after the satirical skewering of male buffoonery has faded. It provides the film with its true beating heart, ensuring its feminist credentials aren’t just thematic window dressing, but lived experience within the narrative.
Technically, the film is not without flaws. Some sequences feel hurried, some satirical dialogue is a little too on the nose and a special effect around the climax lacks the polish of the production design elsewhere. Yet even these imperfections have a charm about them. They underscore the film’s independent spirit, its refusal to conform to the homogenized bilge of so much of cinema’s aeshetic. Jackman is less interested in flawless spectacle than in emotional and thematic resonance, and on that front the film more than delivers.
What makes the work remarkable is its sincerity. In a cinematic landscape increasingly dominated by algorithm-driven sameness, this film stands out for its defiant originality. It revels in its singularity and empathy, in radical power of storytelling: to distract tyrants, to empower the silenced, to imagine new futures. The act of telling a story becomes, in itself, an act of survival and resistance. That message, articulated through Cherry and Hero’s connection, resonates far beyond the screen.
By the end, one feels not just entertained, but invigorated. Jackman’s film is a joyous testament to independence, creativity, and the enduring necessity of stories. It proves that happy endings need not conform to centuries-old formulas, and that love, be it romantic, platonic, queer, or fleeting can be as complex and wondrous as any of the tales we tell.
This is a film of rare joy and spirit, and one that deserves to be celebrated as both a feminist fairytale and a manifesto that will inspire a myriad of future stories.
Grade: A-
“100 Nights of Hero” premiered at the 2025 Venice Film Festival. IFC will release the film in theaters on Friday, December 5.
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