Hedda (2025)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Party Flavor

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

I had been concerned that filmmaker Nia DaCosta would be lost. Following her striking indie debut Little Woods, she immediately landed jobs on big franchises, Candyman, The Marvels, and the upcoming 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. As much as I enjoyed those first two, it left me wondering: what if she gets chewed up by the machine? What if she never gets to make a personal film again?

Happily, that fear has been put to rest with DaCosta's new film Hedda. It's adapted from an 1891 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, which always means that there's a chance for a stagnant, unnecessarily reverent movie. But DaCosta whisks away that notion immediately. This film is alive, daring, and cheerfully wicked.

Tessa Thompson plays Hedda, brilliantly. She speaks in an eloquent English accent with a hint of a coo at the end of every line. We first see her being questioned by police about a murder that occurred in her house during a party. We flash back to the party itself, which takes up most of the film. Hedda is unhappily married, to George (Tom Bateman). They are living in a house they can scarcely afford, and likewise can't afford the opulent party they are preparing. But George is up for a professorship, they want to impress the deciding party, Professor Greenwood (Finbar Lynch).

Thea (Imogen Poots) arrives. Thea now works a slave-like job for professional writer Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss), who also happens to be Hedda's ex-lover. (DaCosta cleverly changed this character from a male in the play, Eilert, to a woman.) Hedda learns that Eileen is about to publish an eagerly-awaited book, and, unfortunately, is also up for the professorship.

Hedda spends the rest of the party cooking up various forms of sabotage, steeped in lust and jealousy. Adding to the mix is Professor Greenwood's much younger, lusty wife Tabitha (Mirren Mack) and the unscrupulous Judge Roland Black (Nicholas Pinnock). (At one point the judge notices a key around Hedda's neck. He asks, "is that the key to your heart?" She responds, "no… to the gun case.")

DaCosta films in bold colors and in glorious old-school widescreen. An early montage depicting the meticulous preparations for the party moves with an infectious rhythm. The camera glides elegantly through the party. In one scene, Hedda dances with abandon, the audio turning inward so that she is alone. When Eileen arrives, and Hedda sees her, it's as if DaCosta physically captures butterflies in the stomach with an exquisite gliding shot.

But as the evening goes on, guests get drunk, and chaos reigns, the film itself also begins to come apart, muting the colors and turning from smooth to shaky. This is a play reinvented for cinema, rather than a mere adaptation.

Hedda has often been described as one of the earliest femmes fatale in literature, but I think DaCosta rescues her from that narrow definition. In this, she's not out to destroy a man. She's merely attempting, in any way possible, to assert her power, to announce that she, too, is a person with feelings and ideas, even if they are monstrous. It's the fact that her doing this burns everything down that is the real tragedy. Hedda is a great movie about a woman who roars.