150 Word Review: 'Hedda' (2025)
Over heels
Director/writer Nia DaCosta’s divinely indecent adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1881 play Hedda Gabler is set during a wild party circa the 1950s. And I mean a real drunken barnburner that spins out of control. At the center of the melee is Tessa Thompson’s confident, calculating Hedda, a well‑bred but bored newlywed in danger of going broke. DeCosta respects Ibsen’s social critiques while filtering this story of class and ambition through a queer lens. She gender‑swaps some roles, but Hedda still strikes a defiant feminist pose: she is fiercely independent, right or wrong.
Tom Bateman is George, Hedda’s husband, an ambitious, debt‑ridden professor forced to compete for a plum job against a former lover of Hedda, Nina Hoss. Chekhov’s gun stars as Hedda’s father’s antique pistol. Thompson carries the movie on her back. She schemes, quips, and manipulates her well-heeled, poorly behaved guests. Ibsen wrote a tragedy; DaCosta lightens it up.
I completely missed this one! It's on my watchlist. Thanks for getting it in front of me. These tired eyes often overlook little gems, but that's why I love your newsletter so much!
Must watch this. I had plans to remake Hedda Gabbler and set it on the internet, remake The Master Builder as a #MeToo story, remake The Wild Duck about pronouns, and so on