Review - Hedda
Directed by: Nia DaCosta
Written by: Nia DaCosta
Starring: Tessa Thompson, Imogen Poots, Tom Bateman, Nicholas Pinnock, Nina Hoss
Running Time: 107 Minutes
Rating: 3/5
Nia DaCosta’s Hedda is a sultry, slow-burning drama that is far more interested in mood and power dynamics than narrative momentum. Loosely updating Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, the film situates its characters inside a decadent mansion that feels less like a home than a gilded trap. Everything here is polished, controlled, and faintly poisonous.
Tessa Thompson plays Hedda with an ease that borders on dangerous. She has chemistry with everyone and everything around her. With her husband, with her former lover, with the walls themselves. Thompson understands that Hedda’s power lies not in grand gestures but in suggestion, in silence, in the careful withholding of emotion. Even when the film falters, she remains compelling, anchoring scenes that might otherwise drift.
DaCosta’s direction leans heavily into atmosphere. The film luxuriates in texture and stillness, lingering on bodies in space and glances that linger too long. There are clear echoes of Emerald Fennell in the way privilege curdles into menace, and in how desire is framed as something both intoxicating and corrosive. At times, though, the influence feels more cosmetic than structural, giving the film a familiar sheen without always earning the tension underneath it.
Nina Hoss is a standout. She commands every moment she is on screen, delivering a performance that feels grounded, incisive, and quietly formidable. In contrast to Thompson’s seductive ambiguity, Hoss brings clarity and authority, and the film sharpens whenever she enters the frame.
Where Hedda struggles is in its emotional payoff. The updates to the source material are interesting but not always fully interrogated, and the film sometimes mistakes restraint for depth. The stakes feel curiously muted, especially given how volatile these characters are meant to be. What should simmer occasionally settles into something merely warm.
Still, Hedda is an intriguing, handsomely mounted character study. It may not fully unlock the danger and desperation at its core, but it offers flashes of brilliance and performances strong enough to keep it engaging. A film that seduces more than it devastates, and one that leaves you admiring the craft even as you wish it had gone further.
