Hedda - Review

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

HENRIK Ibsen’s classic play Hedda Gabler gets a stylish - and hugely revisionist - update from Nia DaCosta that provides a mesmerising showcase for Tessa Thompson.

Transplanting the tale from Norway’s aristocracy to a country estate in 1950s England, DaCosta also updates both the racial and sexual elements of the story, so that the issues of race and sexual orientation combine with ongoing ones surrounding class.

It serves to heighten both the stakes and the intrigue.

The story therefore follows Hedda (Thompson) as she has just settled for marriage to a well-born academic, George Tesman (Tom Bateman), so that she can live in luxury in the large mansion in which they are throwing a hugely decadent party in the hope of furthering their prospects, especially since George has mortgaged himself to the hilt and must secure a lucrative, newly vacant professorship to help pay the debt.

Standing in his way, however, is the formidable Eileen Lövborg (Nina Hoss), Hedda’s beautiful ex-lover, a brilliant classicist on the cusp of publishing a seminal new book on sexuality. To make matters worse, Eileen’s current lover, Thea (Imogen Poots), is also present, creating a strained dynamic that’s ripe for exploitation - all under the watchful gaze of the ruthless Judge Roland (Nicholas Pinnock), who also holds unfulfilled sexual desires towards Hedda.

Ever scheming and mischievous, Hedda bids to get Eileen drunk and potentially humiliate her, while both flirting and manipulating her other guests into either supporting her power play, satisfying her desires or merely humiliating them for the fun of it.

DaCosta’s film has variously been compared to the likes of Downton Abbey and Bridgerton with a Saltburn sensibility and it’s easy to see why given the way it combines sumptuous period detail and costumes with a revisionist edge that may well leave the Ibsen purists squirming a little.

There’s also a great deal of ambiguity surrounding Hedda’s ultimate intentions, culminating in a climax that perhaps feels a little, well, anti-climactic.

But the fun is in the journey and watching how Hedda teases and toys with her guests, while enabling the various machinations of the plot to offer commentary on the story’s big themes concerning race and racism, class and snobbery and sexuality and freedom.

DaCosta doesn’t spoon feed but she does provide plenty of food for thought, as well as some wickedly witty asides.

The nature of the story doesn’t invite much room for sympathy and it’s difficult to find a character genuinely worth rooting for (a shortcoming perhaps, yet indicative of the self-serving class in which Hedda operates). But that doesn’t detract from the performances.

Thompson obviously relishes a spotlight role that’s continually evolving (allowing for smug confidence, wicked manipulation, repressed desire and quiet vulnerability) but she’s capably matched by the likes of Poots (seemingly timid yet quietly calculated) and Pinnock (appallingly scheming).

But it’s Hoss who provides the film’s biggest fireworks: her firecracker of a character both formidable when in control and an unraveling train wreck when things start to spiral for her. She’s also mesmerising.

Hedda won’t be to everyone’s tastes but it’s a provocative and consistently entertaining update of a classic play that provides a tremendous showcase for its talented cast and confirms DaCosta (currently riding high off the back of the acclaim surrounding 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple) as a fiercely independent voice.

Certificate: 15

Running time: 1hr 47mins