100 Nights of Hero Review: Emma Corrin, Maika Monroe, and Charli XCX Enchant in Queer Feminist Fable
Venice Film Festival
Julia Jackman’s second feature adapts Isabel Greenberg’s fantasy graphic novel
Words by Alex Secilmis 6 September 2025
© IFC
While Emma Corrin and Nicholas Galitzine competing for your affections would be a fairy tale in itself for many, 100 Nights of Hero isn’t that kind of story. Rather, Julia Jackman has made a kooky love triangle costume drama that is fiercely funny, disarmingly earnest, and ever-relevant in its portrayal of queer longing and female agency.
In a silly yet sinister patriarchal society—centred around the worship of an arrogant god named BirdMan (Richard E. Grant in a wonderfully hammy cameo)—Cherry (Maika Monroe) is a young woman whose sole purpose is to be a wife and mother. Chaste and an excellent chess player, she is deemed ideal for the former role, but she cannot excel at the latter because her husband, Jerome, is uninterested in consummating the marriage. When the Beaked Brothers, BirdMan’s disciples, give her 100 nights to conceive an heir or else, Cherry is faced with becoming the subject of another cautionary tale like Janet the Barren, Sara the Unfaithful, and Nadia the Lesbian.
© IFC
Unconcerned by the gravity of Cherry’s situation, Jerome makes a bet with the dashingly distasteful Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine): he will leave “on business” and give Manfred the 100 nights to seduce his wife. If Manfred fails, he will bring Jerome an heir and testify that it is his son. If Manfred succeeds, he will get Jerome’s castle, and the pair cheerfully agree to watch Cherry hang for infidelity. The hot-headed nobleman gets to work, slaughtering a stag shirtless and requesting a house tour with Sabrina Carpenter-level innuendo, but Cherry would much rather spend time with Hero (Emma Corrin) and listen to her stories about the rebellious Rosa (Charli XCX) and her two sisters.
A fresh fairy tale with satirical bite, 100 Nights of Hero is a genre-bending romp that seamlessly balances its droll humour with a warm queer love story. Jackman flirts with the conventions of the stuffy period drama (with ornate costumes and production design by Susie Coulthard and Sofia Sacomani, respectively) to dial up the forbidden yearning and enhance Emma Corrin and Maika Monroe’s already crackling chemistry. The two make for an excellent leading pair: Corrin is magnetic as the shrewd, mischievous Hero and Monroe finds the tragicomedy in Cherry’s extreme repression. Curiously, she exercises some of the muscles that made her tense FBI agent in Longlegs so haunting, and it works a charm when applied to a sexually frustrated noblewoman. Rounding out the main cast is a superbly sleazy Nicholas Galitzine, who transposes the brutish hetero villainy of his Bottoms character into a hilariously nightmarish vision of masculinity.
© IFC
Outside the thorny love triangle, Amir El-Masry is a delight as Cherry’s pompous husband, while pop star supreme Charli XCX gracefully transitions to the silver screen in a minimal but memorable role. She also delivers a particularly memorable line related to literacy—you’ll know it when you see it—that got a well-earned laugh out of the crowd at the Venice premiere.
© IFC
As the titular character’s tales start to bring everyone in the castle closer together—even endearing the guards and provoking a possible redemption arc for Manfred—100 Nights of Hero reflects with sensitivity on the power of stories and the question of who has the right to tell them. What is abundantly clear about this sharp, endearing offbeat film is that that director Julia Jackman was the right person to tell this one.