100 Nights of Hero re-invents the One Thousand and One Nights, aka The Arabian Nights, aka the story of Scheherazade, making sex and gender dynamics more explicit even than they were in the original stories and packaging everything up like a gift of Turkish delight wrapped in gossamer, drenched in perfume, and then swaddled in silk.
Don’t come for realism, in other words. Instead director Julia Jackman defiantly heads into the realm of the fantastical, the exotic, the exquisite. Her Middle East is one of grand viziers and curly slippers rather than mad mullahs and nuclear enrichment facilities.
So, we all know the Scheherazade story. A wily virgin bride, the latest in a string of women who last one night with their new husband before being decapitated, manages to keep her head by telling him a story that ends on a cliffhanger. To learn how things pan out he has to keep her alive until the next night, which he does, night after night after night. She keeps the story going; he lets her live. It’s an allegory for sexual inventiveness, if you want to look at it that way, or more simply of just having something to say for yourself.
Talking of which, Emma Corrin as Hero, the ladies maid of Maika Monroe’s new bride Cherry, who would probably be pregnant if her husband Jerome (Amir El-Masry) weren’t ducking his duties in the bedroom. Possibly prefers the guys to the gals. To cover his shortcomings, Jerome comes up with a plan – he’ll go away for 100 nights and leave his dashing, handsome and studly friend Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine) in residence. And woe betide his wife if she has carnally succumbed by the time he returns. All this at the behest of the Beaked Brotherhood, the masked religious order who control all aspects of daily life and are demanding signs of an heir. It seems there are mad mullahs after all.
A version of the 1001 Nights ensues, though it’s Hero telling the stories, which have a Scheherazade quality – they bewitch both her mistress and Manfred, who spends the greater part of his days sniffing this way and that looking for a potential entry point with Cherry. But, dear reader, won’t he sabotage himself by falling in love with her? Not if Hero falls in love with her first, it seems.
There is a pantomime aspect to it all, and the actors all play along. Galitzine plays Manfred as a man who’d take advantage of you if you bent over to pick up a dropped coin. Corrin is arch and funny in an understated way. Monroe plays Cherry (will she lose hers?) like a rabbit in a trap. Narrating with an arched eyebrow is Felicity Jones. The look is lavish and borderline mad – stained glass and coloured lights, bizarre costumes, lots of medieval furniture and carved wood. In post-production everything has been honeyed up and starburst filtration has been added. On the rare external scenes we see there are several moons in the sky. The house, incidentally, is the Tudor Gothic confection Knebworth House just north of London. Home to a venerable rock festival where Metalicca, The Rolling Stones and Robbie Williams have all played, it actually looks like that.
Refreshingly everyone speak in their own accent – Corrin is English, Monroe American – but that’s one of the few concessions to realism.
I liked it a lot, its defiance, its inventiveness, its puckish and whimsical style. It’s a glorious film in many ways, undermined only by its hammer attack on its themes, as if religious fundamentalism, sexuality and gender politics weren’t already perfectly evident as themes in the 1001 Nights. The ending is particularly sappy, so bad I urge you to brace yourselves. The rest is remarkable. More of this sort of thing.
100 Nights of Hero – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
