Hedda
2025
Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler is one of my favorite plays, so when I saw that Nia DaCosta was making a film adaptation this year, I was excited. When I saw that she had cast Tessa Thompson in the title role, I was slightly wary. Thompson is an actress who can be anywhere from great to bad. I saw that the film’s setting was moved from nineteenth-century Scandinavia to England in the fifties, and this pleased me. Finally, I learned that DaCosta had gender-swapped the key character of Dr. Lovborg, and I was nervous. All of this emotional yo-yoing is appropriate for an Ibsen play. He was the master of emotionally charged Realist drama, and his plots yank your feelings every which way.
DaCosta’s film—named simply Hedda—is available on Amazon Prime, and it is a wonderful payoff for all those preparatory emotional acrobatics. Tessa Thompson does great work as Hedda Gabler, but the movie belongs to Nina Hoss’s furious twister of a Dr. Lovborg. Lovborg, Hedda’s former lover, is at the very center of the drama, and making the character a woman actually strengthened Ibsen’s themes of a woman’s place in society. As a revered academic, a female Dr. Lovborg introduces the element of a woman’s reception and role in scholarship and the workplace (neither of which was a choice in Ibsen’s day). The gender change also makes the primary love triangle a lesbian affair, which effectively sets the three main roles in a linked-but-competitive cabal of women bridling at their cultural roles. Surprisingly, I found it a very strong choice.
Hedda Gabler is a wild, willful woman with no impulse control and a rebellious pistol habit. Reaching a certain age at which she was required to attain financial means by marrying, this dangerous woman with a scandalous past managed to land a suitable husband in Mr. Tesman. Her whims and boredom immediately drove the couple to the brink of financial ruin, however, with the only escape hatch a professorial position that would go to either Lovborg or Tesman. Oh, the drama to ensue…!
Hoss’s performance as Lovborg is astounding, overshadowing Thompson’s destructively distracted Hedda. They are both good, however, as is Imogen Poots as the third side of the love triangle. There is even a tiny scene in which Kathryn Hunter delivers a characteristically great monologue…although it doesn’t quite fit into the movie, per se. As it is Hunter’s only scene, I wonder if DaCosta found herself unexpectedly gifted with a short visit from the great stage actress and couldn’t resist adding her to the film.
The film features an atmospheric score/soundscape by Hildur Guðnadóttir and amazingly arresting designs by Cara Brower and Lindsay Pugh. These two elements may be the real ‘secret sauce’ of the movie, weaving a sumptuous and binding environment that perfectly cradles the action.
A play as famous as Hedda Gabler has been reimagined many times before, but I think this is my favorite production, even though the words themselves are DaCosta’s and not Ibsen’s. It is a taut, stylish, and unpredictable film that does the play justice.