‘Hedda’ Review: A Visually Striking, Frantic Adaptation That Sacrifices the Complexity of Ibsen’s Classic (Prime Video)
A bold but uneven modern adaptation of the classic play, with Tessa Thompson’s magnetic Hedda upending a 1950s British household. Despite striking visuals, the film struggles to capture the play’s subtle psychological tension.
Several concrete differences—one of them major—set Hedda apart from Henrik Ibsen’s classic play Hedda Gabler. Some changes are predictable, even necessary, when adapting a work that has seen hundreds of stage productions and countless screen versions: the setting, the time period, the nature of certain characters, the set design. But what’s unusual here is the shift in focus—and even in meaning—of both the story and its famously complex protagonist. Director Nia DaCosta pulls every trick from the modern adaptation playbook—constantly moving the camera, cutting between spaces, filling frames with nonstop action—but in doing so, she loses something essential: the play’s disturbing, haunting ambiguity.
DaCosta is a director who thrives on flair. Her fingerprints are all over her work, from the bold visuals of Candyman to her over-the-top stint with The Marvels, another studio experiment that gave headaches to both the company and filmmakers (like Chloe Zhao) who signed on to that professionally perilous venture. With Hedda, it seemed she might be taking a personal and professional detour—a chance to tackle something more adult, human, and character-driven. The film does flirt with that, but the differences from her previous work are surprisingly slight. In short, this Ibsen adaptation is “much ado about nothing.”
Three major alterations stand out, only one of which carries weight. Hedda Gabler, originally a Norwegian general’s daughter married to a late-19th-century scholar, is now a Black British woman in the 1950s, living in a manor that looks like it was lifted straight from Downton Abbey. To avoid selling it, her husband George Tesman (Tom Bateman) must secure a prestigious university post. The couple throws a party to ensure it—but, predictably, things go off the rails.
Hedda is also bisexual, which shifts the story slightly. Her romantic past—and not-so-past—involves both women and men, a twist Ibsen likely didn’t imagine. The first hint that the party will spiral out of control comes with the arrival of Eileen Lovborg (German actress Nina Hoss), a character originally written as male. Lovborg was Hedda’s great love but now functions as an adversary: romantically involved with another woman (Imogen Potts) and competing with George for the university post. Against this tangled backdrop, Hedda tracks a night in which nearly everything goes wrong.
Beyond the cosmetic updates (there have been countless Hedda Gabler adaptations, including Patrick Marber’s minimalist modern apartment version starring Ruth Wilson), DaCosta adds a twist that’s harder to parse. Her Hedda is cartoonishly villainous: fierce, furious, willing to do anything to improve her economic situation. Her husband is a mere pawn. Beneath the pretense of helping him succeed lurks a not-so-secret desire to sabotage Eileen—out of jealousy, envy of her independence, or pure vengeance.
Tessa Thompson makes this explicit from the first frame. She’s magnetic, no doubt, but she acts with every inch of her body—eyebrows, eyes, lips, voice, hands, arms—all part of a performance more suited to the stage than the camera, which keeps her in close-up for most of the film. Seductive, sinister, calculating, she strips Hedda of Ibsen’s subtle contradictions and turns her into a Cruella de Vil-type in a Bridgerton-style mansion. Still, DaCosta and her team deserve credit for the lush production design and immersive cinematography: the film may be thin thematically, but it looks stunning.
The real highlight is Nina Hoss. Calm, psychologically dense, she is a counterpoint to Thompson’s storm. Even in a slightly absurd, glam-medieval peasant costume, her Lovborg navigates a male-dominated world with quiet determination. She’s given up drinking, wants to be accepted by the academic elite, but can’t resist Hedda’s magnetic pull—who exploits Eileen’s vulnerability, as the tango says, “when she gets sad with alcohol.” Lovborg’s manuscript promises entry into the world she wants, but with Hedda circling, it offers little security.
The film opens near the end, with Hedda recounting events during a police interrogation, so even if you’ve never seen the play, you know things are doomed. A gun appears two minutes later—Chekhovian nod or parody? DaCosta never fully leans into the grand guignol excess that might have made the film work better, leaving Hedda stuck between a pop adaptation of a classic, a showcase for its star, and a failed thematic experiment. It’s a superficially postmodern Ibsen that makes more sense on paper than on screen, «a tale full of noise and fury» that ultimately says far less than it seems to.
