100 NIGHTS OF HERO is a wonderful graphic novel by Isabel Greenberg whose themes are feminist and queer and sex positive. In layered and echoing stories she tells us about a world created by a wonderful young woman called Kiddo until her dad, Birdman, turns into a tyrannical patriarchy. We hear about a beautiful young woman who gets pregnant by a man but transcends into a moon. We hear of a young bride abused by her husband - her washed bones made into a lyrical harp. Of beautiful sisters who secretly read and write and are murdered for this crime, their graves marked with stones. Again and again these layered stories recast well-known fairy-tales, biblical tales and myths and speak to a world in which bright women are subjugated and killed.
And then we focus in on the story of Cherry and Hero. Cherry is an aristocrat and Hero is her maid but they are secret lovers. Cherry’s husband sets her up by making a despicable wager. His mate Manfred will have 100 nights to seduce her and prove that all women are harlots. This dastardly man tells her plainly he is going to rape her. So every night Hero tells Manfred a story so exciting that he forgets to rape Cherry, and leaves him on a cliffhanger. She is our Sheherezade for 100 nights. And not only for Manfred but the guards and the people of the town who also become hooked on the stories. So when at last our lovers are arrested and thrown from a tower in punishment, the town rises up and overthrows the patriarchy.
The story is funny, profound, refreshingly sex positive and unnervingly relevant in these increasingly bigoted times. I love that Cherry and Hero feel no shame in their love. They both have intelligence and agency. Yes Hero is the more self-assured and infinitely resourceful but Cherry isn’t some passive whiny pathetic woman either.
So imagine my horror at Julia Jackman’s new feature length adaptation of the novel, in which Cherry becomes a weedy pathetic simpering fool and there’s no sex, and half the stories are omitted or garbled, there’s no threat of rape, far from being hooked on the stories, the seducer is bored to sleep by them, and … and … it just all makes no sense. It’s all so milquetoast. Where’s the audacity and wonder and excitement?
I also hate to rag on a film that presumably had a micro-budget but it just looks cheap. This should be a film set mostly at night in which the moon and stars are major characters. A film in which a big city full of people rises up in revolt. But no. This is all broad daylight and harshly reflective electric candles and aaargh! I am so frustrated at this milquetoast under-funded attempt at turning this wonderful book into a film. Pretty much the only thing it got right was the deadpan wit thanks to Emma Corrin’s hilarious reaction shots and Nicholas Galitzine’s line-readings as Hero and Manfred respectively.
100 NIGHTS OF HERO is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 90 minutes. It played Venice and London and opens in the US on December 5th.
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