The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Arabian Nights in Julia Jackman’s feature debut, a feminist fantasy that leans hard into whimsy while making some salient points about the place of women in the real world. Festivals have been generous to it so far, with both the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week and the London Film Festival giving it their closing-night slots. How it will fare in the real world is a moot point, however, and the film’s arch aesthetic — imagine what Wes Anderson might do with a BBC budget, and less — is hardly a strong selling point. The film’s flaws are pretty much all front-loaded into the almost aggressively twee prologue, and if you can handle that, the rest of the film should be plain sailing.
As per the graphic novel it’s based on, the events of the film to follow occur in a parallel medieval world with three moons, a place that was created by a being called Kiddo. Kiddo intended for her subjects to live their lives as they wish, but her despotic father Birdman (Richard E. Grant) muscled in on the act. As a result, his legacy is everywhere; bird imagery is pervasive, and the world is run by a masonic cult called the Beak Brothers who wear bird masks to obscure their faces.
Another of Birdman’s idiosyncrasies is that the women in his daughter’s world must marry and give their husbands a son, which brings us to the first of the two female leads in Jackman’s movie: Cherry (Maika Monroe), who is in her late 20s and every bit the eligible bride. As the film’s unseen narrator (Felicity Jones) attests (and Jackman shows), Cherry is “Beautiful, obedient, good at chess and falconry”. But what Cherry doesn’t know is that she’s about to change her world.
By this time, we are in that world’s present day, and Cherry’s recent marriage is already in trouble; not only has she not yet given birth, her husband Jerome (Amir El-Masry) is showing next to no interest, and, after a meeting with some higher-up within the Beak Brothers, she is effectively sentenced to death if no child is imminent. The reasons for Jerome’s indifference are left vague, as is Cherry’s attachment to her co-lead, Hero (Emma Corrin), who is described as “technically” Cherry’s maid. But though sexual fluidity is a running theme throughout the film, the overwhelming mood, at first, is one of innocence.
Just as the pressure on Jerome is mounting, he gets a visit from an old friend, Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine). In actual, real life, Galitzine is something called a “global fragrance ambassador” for Armani, and that alone might explain a lot about his casting. Manfred is a traditional English rogue, the kind that puts his hands on his hips and snootily yells, “Ha-HAH!” while tossing his hair — and the macabre reason for his sudden arrival is that his wife (“R.I.P.”) has just been executed for being unfaithful. He asks Jerome if he can stay a couple of nights, but Jerome surprises him by announcing that he is going away on business. He tells Manfred he can stay for a month, on the understanding that, if he succeeds in seducing Cherry, Jerome will hand over the castle and everything in it.
The creepy subtext of the bet is that there is something in it for both men and nothing for Cherry. “When I win,” boasts Manfred, “I’ll be right there with you to watch her hang.” But if Jerome wins, all Manfred has to do is procure a child for him — after all, he talks proudly of knowing plenty of people with “one to spare”.
Much of the comedy from hereon comes from Manfred’s predatory pursuit of Cherry, who is shocked (and faints) when he asks to see her boudoir, and her fears are not assuaged when he seemingly butchers a deer with his bare hands for lunch. Luckily, Hero is on hand, and as Jerome extends his stay ever longer — hence the 100 nights of the title — Cherry’s maid offers to provide distractions.
These come in the form of a story that runs through the film until its climax, unfolding in parallel. Hero says it is The Story of the Dancing Stones, but it also tells the story-within-a-story of The League of Secret Storytellers, an underground society for women as founded by three sisters — Mina (Kerena Jagpal), Catarina (Olivia D’Lima) and Rosa (singer Charli XCX) — who disgraced themselves by doing something “sinful, wicked and forbidden for women”. In other words, they could read and write (something that doesn’t end well in either story).
From here, the stage is set for Cherry’s awakening, masterminded with wide-eyed economy by Corrin’s gnomic Hero. It’s cartoonish for sure, which Jackman — for better or for worse — doesn’t really try to hide, and its agenda might seem a little on the nose. But as history keeps telling us, from Afghanistan outwards to the West and East, the suppression of women isn’t going away any time soon.
Title: 100 Nights of HeroFestival: London; Venice (Critics’ Week)Director/screenwriter: Julia Jackman, from the graphic novel by Isabel GreenbergCast: Emma Corrin, Nicholas Galitzine, Maika Monroe, Amir El Masry, Charli XCX, Kerena Jagpal, Olivia D’Lima, Richard E. Grant, Felicity JonesSales agent: WMERunning time: 1 hr 30 mins
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