Directed By Julia Jackman

Starring – Emma Corrin, Maika Monroe, Nicholas Galitzine

The Plot – When a charming house guest (Galitzine) arrives at a remote castle, the delicate dynamic between a neglectful husband (Amir El-Masry), his innocent bride Cherry (Monroe), and their devoted maid Hero (Corrin), is thrown into chaos.

Rated PG-13 for sexual material, some bloody images and adult language.

100 Nights of Hero – Teaser Trailer | HD | Independent Film Company

POSITIVES

In recent years, there have been no shortage of contemporary renderings towards 18th century literature, particularly as a means to exploit the outdated ideals that have condemned their practices scathingly, and while “100 Nights of Hero” is far from the most compelling and entertainingly engaging of these re-imaginings, it does serve as a bountiful debut for Jackman, particularly in the spell-binding beauty she exudes in every frame. There’s a colorfully plush and pageantry posh elegance about the film that combine to exude this mystical dream-like quality about the way that every scene is delicately framed, featuring eye-fetching detail of art direction, costume designs, and set decoration, that not only enamors and immerses us in the unmistakable designation of the intended age, but also play especially well to the consistency of the movie’s tone, which at least for the superior first half of the film features this Wes Anderson kind of cadence and humorous charm that constantly pokes humiliating fun to the integrities of its characters. In fact, so much about the ways that Jackman and her production frame, edit and direct her ensemble feels like they were plucked directly from the Anderson learning tree of filmmaking, featuring these bluntly dry deliveries of intentional monotony that go a long way towards hammering home bizarre and silliness of the interactions, all with this unavoidable elements of suppressed homosexuality that hangs over the heads of its characters, mere seconds from them being forced to actually confront it in a society that condemns it as sinful. The humor itself certainly isn’t anything groundbreaking or gut-busting, with regards to its originality, creativity, or even magnitude of its pay-offs, but it does enrich these stuffily sincere characters with an essence of self-awareness that seemingly looks directly at the audience for its feministic observations, in turn allowing the first half of the movie to transpire far more seamlessly than that of a second half that is plauged by its own problems in execution. On top of mesmerizing style and humorous substance, the film is also blessed by valuable performances between Emma Corrin and Maika Monroe, who each do such a commanding job in playing to the camera, while harvesting a naturalized element of chemistry that feels like a breath of fresh air when compared to the other stuffily artificial dynamics that surround the film. Corrin receives her biggest role yet as this mysterious maid devoted entirely as the backbone to Cherry’s support system, and in featuring razor sharp abrasiveness in the air of her automatic deliveries, against male suitors with devious intentions, really commands a powerful heroine who utilizes her tongue just as much as she does her supernatural capabilities as a storyteller, allowing time to transpire with ease, which unfortunately doesn’t always serve the narrative encasing these scenes favorably. As for Monroe, the unwavering elegance and sophisticated demeanor that she lends endlessly to the role plays a vital part in articulating the sexual insecurities of the character, particularly against the conflict of a husband who absolutely refuses to go to bed with her, and while Monroe is often relegated to the straight lady approach to much of the movie’s surrounding humor, it’s the thick vulnerability that she supplants to the character that goes the longest way in embracing her eye-opening revelation, a challenge that Maika wholeheartedly embraces with facial acting that vividly evokes the windows into the soul aching with longing and unfulfillment.

NEGATIVES

Unfortunately, the pleasantries stop there for Julia Jackman’s feature length directorial debut, as “100 Nights of Hero” is often a misfire of misdirection that sinks its worthily noble cause, particularly with feminist messaging featuring the kind of intentioned subtlety as a Mack truck hitting a gasoline plant. While it’s already evident that a film pertaining to progressive underlining already alienates half of its audience, even before the film starts, even those of us with progressive leaning ideals are left forcefully out in the cold, distinctly in a tonally-eradicating third act that not only abruptly rushes through its storytelling arcs and evolutions, but also carry within an overall structure that openly embraces interruptions in the narrative, in the form of these storytelling transitions featuring a strangely surreal cameo from Felicity Jones as the Moon and overhead narrator, every ten minutes or so, making this feel like two distinctly different stories that are constantly at war over the focus of the meager 85-minute runtime. It’s already difficult enough to shoehorn 100 days of exposition and storytelling into the confines of such a brief investment, but it’s made even more difficult with this surface level kind of shallow social commentary pertaining patriarchal practices that is hammered so forcefully into some of the biggest and most ambitious scenes of the entire film, with nothing deeper than the observation of men being sad and desperately controlling to drive such a creatively bold excursion. On top of this, the tonal shifts between the aforementioned halves of the film lead to plenty of more problems with the consistency of the movie’s pacing, particularly as the second half completely abandons the charms of its first half’s subtly enacting humor, in order to embrace a far more dramatically driven conflict that emotionally the movie feels like it doesn’t earn in the slightest. Because of such, this is definitely a movie that wants to have its cake and eat it too, with regards to inconsistency that heavily conjures these tonal shifts directly placing a grave weight on the fluidity of the pacing, with even the dramatics luring us into a false sense of security with very little urgency and tension crafted from such an inevitable confrontation, and while the direction of the story does lead to more stakes to what’s eventually surmised, the single greatest thing sacrificed is its integrity as a comedy-first helming, leaving me hanging on by strings throughout a final twenty minutes that are unavoidably boring. Finally, while I’ve read that many critics and moviegoers have adored the unforeseen electronic compositions in Oliver Coates’ score, I found them to be compromisingly distracting to the emotionality of scenes and sequences that they accompany, reaching for something unconventional against traditional orchestral helming, and instead surmising far too much modernism in the air of the interpretation. As someone who typically yearns for electronic and synthesized scores, my feelings on this one is especially surprising, even measuring them for their artistry, as each of them feel far too expansively muted and repetitious to ever feel pulsing to a scene’s integrity, featuring little in the way of rhythmic impulses or addictive outlining to emphasize their influence towards meeting the performances at eye level, with far too much of a try-hard emphasis on Coates insisting on injecting something cool and unconforming, instead of themes that work cohesively with the imagery and overall production.

OVERALL
“100 Nights of Hero” might surmise a half-hilarious script and mesmerizingly dream-like style for Julia Jackman’s feature length directorial debut, but its creative corset is squeezed a bit too tightly in the confines of its breakneck pacing and abridged storytelling, on its way to an inferior second half with abandoned personality and shallowly squandered feministic exploits. Despite an important outlining of gender and queer resilience, the film’s commentary flounders under the weight of its own oppressive ambition, leaving this hero incapable of flying high and overcoming the odds when it matters most.

My Grade: 5.6 or D+