Nia DaCosta’s ‘Hedda’ breathes new life into the classic play

Tessa Thompson stars as Hedda in the film based on the iconic play “Hedda Gabler.” Photo courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios.

Nia DaCosta’s “Hedda” (2025) is a riveting reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play “Hedda Gabler” (1891). Set in 1950s England, the film follows Hedda through 24 hours, when she hosts a party that slowly devolves into chaos. “Hedda” feels like the cinematic equivalent of red wine. It’s dark, rich, indulgent but sharp. It’s fun and exciting, but before you know it, it has intoxicated you fully and begun sinking down into a gradual melancholy.

DaCosta’s interpretation of Hedda, played by Tessa Thompson, is born out of wedlock to interracial military parents. She is a housewife to George Tesman (Tom Bateman), a professor of a class lower than hers, but she maintains her hollow façade of wealth by renting out a mansion for one night to host the party, where her former lover, Professor Lovborg (Nina Hoss), appears.

Instead of using the original male character Ejlert, DaCosta portrays Professor Lovborg as a woman named Eileen. Her rivalry with Hedda’s husband is not for Hedda’s affection, but for a profession at the same university. In this version, George is meek and by-the-book, while Eileen is creative and daring, on the verge of publishing a revolutionary nonfiction work about sex. On top of that, Eileen brings her new lover, Thea (Imogen Poots) to the party, who, rather symbolically, ends up borrowing Hedda’s old clothes for the night.

Thompson’s portrayal of Hedda is slinky and cunning. Her steady composure blurs together Hedda’s charm and cruelty until the story’s elements of danger and desire are frightfully indistinguishable. This works well in the favor of DaCosta’s writing, which beneath the surface, opens up an intricate social commentary about queerness and interconnectedness.

Throughout the film, Hedda makes deliberate attempts to sabotage Eileen’s life. She could be protecting her comfortable life with her husband, pulling Eileen closer to her or punishing Eileen for finding a new lover, but her motives remain unclear. This tension is where DaCosta paints that beautiful, painful picture of social intersectionality, one where the characters’ layers are inseparable from one another and their different personal needs bleed into each other. 

Eileen’s reality as a lesbian white woman building her career is entwined with Hedda’s as a queer mixed woman building a home, but in so many ways, they are worlds away, and it can’t be explicitly stated how or why. Their needs and actions build on each other and break each other down in the name of love and money, and DaCosta leaves it to the audience to decide what’s left.

All of this tension builds amidst jarring moments of peril, like the creak of an unsteady chandelier or the cock of a loaded gun. Every second of the film feels specific and intentional, like a side character’s passing comment on a man’s wife, who apparently “loves eating out.”

One striking visual is when Hedda first sees Eileen, DaCosta uses a slow dolly zoom, a technique that makes the background shift while the subject stays in focus, to make it seem as if the room is collapsing in on Hedda. The score is deliberate as well, opening with Betty Hutton’s“It’s a Man” to announce the weight of gender before any dialogue is said and using a jazz cover of Björk’s “It’s Oh So Quiet” to build tension later on as guests are dancing in the ballroom.

The costuming choices are even commendable, functioning as thoughtful mechanical pieces of the story. For example, Eileen’s dress allows for a moment of dark humor later in the story that makes a statement about being a woman in a professional space, and towards the end of the film makes a striking visual contrast. The characters’ costumes also shift with other physical elements in the film like water, and the transitions of these states are well-executed.

Orchestrating all of these moving parts while weaving universal themes through a classic story, DaCosta made “Hedda” into something entirely new and timeless. The film is nothing short of a triumph and a clear indication that Nia DaCosta’s career is one to watch.