Hedda: Movie Review

Cast: Tessa Thompson, Nina Hoss, Tom Bateman, Imogen Poots

Director: Nia DaCosta

Tessa Thompson channels vibrant with vulnerable in the latest adaptation of Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen.

Reteaming with her Little Woods director Nia DaCosta, Thompson plays Hedda, a woman trapped in a society marriage and who starts the film with rocks in her pockets in her lake and subsequently questioned about a murder that took place at the party she and her newly married husband were throwing at their majestic estate.

As the film flashes back to what has transpired, it becomes a picture of unhappiness as high society mixes with heartbreak. Hedda has planned an opulent party, paid for by a husband she loathes and who barely can afford to cover the costs. But determined to please his wife, he pushes in, unaware of the temptations that lie around her.

The tense pot is further swirled when Hedda's ex-lover Eileen Lovborg shows up, determined to resolve the unfinished business between the pair of them - no matter what the cost.

In among the hedonism that channels The Great Gatsby and the sapphic undertones that are brought into the updated mix, lies a film whose central performances by Hoss as Lovborg and Thompson as Hedda elevate to maximum effect.

Thompson has rarely been better, flirting and flitting between surety and uncertainty with ease as her character manipulates her way around the event. Thompson seizes on the role with chutzpah and more than delivers a compelling and rich performance as the mundanities of the script play out.

Hoss is her on-screen equal, both in character and performance and the frisson of uncertainty between the pair of them crackles throughout.

Yet it's also DaCosta who emerges as the talent here, setting a dazzling and radiant life into a play that's decades old with themes of alienation, loss and greed all thrown in for good measure.

It's a sensual and thrilling combination - and as a result, Hedda crackles when it needs to and oozes opulence on the screen with brilliant costuming and clever careful direction mixing the mystery with the Dionysian madness.

Hedda is streaming on Prime Video from October 29.