British cinema seems to travel back and forth on a spectrum from social realism to costume drama, and if this year’s Venice International Film Critics’ Week closer 100 Nights of Hero [+lee también:
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Deriving from Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel, the mysterious kingdom it is set in enforces heteronormativity and patriarchy through rules imposed by a deity called Bird Man (Richard E Grant) and his cronies, the Beak Brothers. After they confront her around a wide table, like a malevolent university admissions panel, Cherry (Maika Monroe) is ordered to conceive a child with her aristocratic husband, Jerome (Amir El Masry), in 100 nights, or she’ll be executed. With Jerome bucking the kingdom’s rules in a more surreptitious way, owing to his own clear yet closeted queerness, he makes a wager with his pal Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine, in a nicely self-mocking turn) that the latter will be able to seduce Cherry, and he will grant his friend his whole estate if he does.

While Cherry is ambiguous in her sexuality, her handmaid Hero (Emma Corrin) devises a method to both protect and potentially woo her. She’s part of a secret order of storyteller-enchantresses – in a land where reading and writing are forbidden – and like Scheherazade (hinted at by the Arabian Nights reference in the film’s title), she tells stories that physically and intellectually hypnotise Manfred, a delaying tactic preventing him from making a move on Cherry. It’s disappointing that we only get to hear and witness one in full, with the fashionable electropop star Charli XCX playing Rosa the Curious, who’s both a cautionary tale and a folk hero in the kingdom’s lore. Defying an arranged marriage set up by her well-meaning father, she’s one of the first authors of the stories that circulate as near-samizdat across the land, with Charli XCX’s star persona chiming with her character, as a straight-talking, pop-feminist role model.

Jackman is helped by production designer Sofia Sacomani to achieve an equal playfulness and sureness of tone. The curiosity of two male guard characters – comic-relief figures familiar from Shakespeare’s tragedies – towards Hero’s stories helps undercut the growing peril, making the audience feel they’re privy to an elaborate joke shared with the characters and filmmakers. DoP Xenia Patricia’s deep-focus lensing takes inspiration from Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite [+lee también:
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100 Nights of Hero can also feel superficial with its reams of UK star cameos – inflating the cast list so the movie seems bigger in scope than it really is – and from its sympathetic, if barely provocative, politics. But Jackman deserves immense credit for keeping a disciplined hold on tone, shielding her film from scattershot whimsy, when this is the kind of material that often defeats young directors. It’s evident that we’ll be seeing more from her, considering her home industry’s support so far, and perhaps with greater ambition next time.

100 Nights of Hero is a UK-US co-production, staged by Erebus Pictures and Project Infinity. Its international sales are handled by WME Independent.