Hedda (2025) Review!!

Synopsis – A provocative, modern reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play. HEDDA finds herself torn between the lingering ache of a past love and the quiet suffocation of her present life.

My Take – Indeed only in a short period of time, writer-director Nia DaCosta has proven herself to be not only just one of the most efficient directors in recent years, but also an excellent cinematic risk-taker. An element quite visible in her latest, which sees her swap franchise installments for a small and contained Prime Video adaptation that puts a queer spin on Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play ‘Hedda Gabler‘.

His second-most famous play that has been messed around with plenty in recent years. Including a much-derided stage production starring Mary-Louise Parker and a 2006 sci-fi re-imagining called Heddatron.

But director DaCosta’s re-imagining readjusts much of the narrative by not only just moving the action from 1890s Norway to 1950s England, but by placing its focus primarily on subterfuge and sexual intrigue. A change that allows the effect of the story line to land with the intended jolt, but often also ends up mistaking its style for depth.

Resulting in a film with admirable ambitions, but lacking execution as some of the film’s more brash stylistic choices feel like they’re unnecessarily trying to overcompensate for the dialogue-driven material.

Yes, this is a film that works in implications, as it chooses to suggest and allude to moments of intrigue that are not entirely depicted, but the update also lacks the necessary bite and struggles to reach the height of its own aspirations, instead largely feeling like an echo of something formerly great, a bit like the massive manor in which the party (and the whole film) takes place.

The film is at its best when it maintain devotion to Tessa Thompson‘s titular character and Nina Hoss, but most of the narrative’s emphasis is often put in the wrong places, with certain characters and plot points that end up feeling under-served. Never coming close to touching that kind of cinematic greatness it promised.

Set in early 20th-century England, the story follows the former bohemian free-spirit Hedda (Tessa Thompson), the bastard daughter of the late General Gabler, who is known for her love of guns and for playing with people’s emotions. Even her recent marriage and desire for further wealth has put her academic husband George (Tom Bateman) into debt.

And now after recently returning from their extended honeymoon abroad they have moved into a country estate they cannot really afford. That is, unless George gets a prestigious professorship and an endowment at the university where he teaches, prompting Hedda to devise a party that would allegedly help him achieve this goal, inviting his superior, Professor Greenwood (Finbar Lynch), and his young wife Tabitha (Mirren Mack), alongside a myriad of Hedda’s bohemian friends.

However, while things appear to be going well, with both Greenwood and Tabitha seemingly having a good time, the appearance of George’s fellow academic Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss), a recently sober alcoholic and Hedda’s ex-lover, and her new companion, Thea (Imogen Poots), throws her off. And since Hedda cannot stand the idea of someone having greater power over Eileen than herself, a ruthless game of manipulation, where lust, jealousy, and betrayal collide, begins.

Though, Ibsen’s original work is known to have deployed Hedda’s psychological cat-and-mouse game over four acts, here, director DaCosta splits her film into five, denoting the structure with title cards in line with the recent trend of filmmakers delineating their films with chapters. But while the mechanics of everyone’s mental decline is well plotted, as is the case with many works of theater that are adapted to the big screen, the film lacks the immersive quality needed to make the performances feel truly intimate.

Perhaps in a way of sidestepping these issues, director DeCosta often chooses to isolate her characters in extreme close-ups and use a pulsating, distractingly overpowering score by Hildur Guðnadóttir to add artificial tension. It doesn’t help that the film struggles to string together its scenes in a logical manner, often feeling like a sequence of vignettes that fail to mount the appropriate tension. The film’s best moments spring from quiet drama, such as an exchange between Hedda and Eileen where both speak honestly, soberly, and without that oppressive score.

Even the party sequences themselves were clearly a lot of fun to film and there is the wonder of the sensory pleasures of her design. She captures the film’s nightmare party in richly saturated color, drenched in the golden glow of practical lighting. Director DaCosta dexterously moves her camera between rooms, gliding through scenes with smooth, exciting momentum.

It’s an impressive feat of technical film-making, which has now become a hallmark of DaCosta’s work. But there is a better Hedda Gabler to be made in this modernist, eye-popping mode. It just shouldn’t be one that so readily cheapens a character who’s earned over a century of close and careful attention, for good reason.

In what surely must be an Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Actress, Tessa Thompson is just brilliant. She is terrific as Hedda. From the second we are introduced her, we are astounded and drawn in by such an acting performance. It is up there with the best of the best. Nina Hoss’s performance too is marvelous and literally commanded her scenes. While Imogen Poots, Tom Bateman, Nicholas Pinnock and Kathryn Hunter bring in decent supporting turns, the rest of the ensemble is under-served. On the whole, ‘Hedda‘ is an incoherent reworking that struggles to engage despite lively performances.