Hop Film: Hedda
Director Nia DaCosta ('Candyman') delivers a bold take on Henrik Ibsen's play, with a magnetic lead performance from Tessa Thompson in a fresh, feminist game of power.
Director Nia DaCosta ('Candyman') delivers a bold take on Henrik Ibsen's play, with a magnetic lead performance from Tessa Thompson in a fresh, feminist game of power.
Transplanting the action to 1950s England, director Nia DaCosta (the first Black woman director to open #1 at the box office with Candyman) delves into Ibsen's themes of power, repression, and freedom, but with a stylish, queer and tragic edge.
Newly wed and precariously dissatisfied with life, Hedda (Thompson), gun-loving daughter of the late General Gabler, has convinced her husband George (Tom Bateman), a timid but ambitious scholar, to throw a lavish party the couple cannot afford. On the teeming guest list is Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss), a celebrated author of a book exploring sexuality—and George's key rival for a coveted academic post. Hedda sees the guests as pawns in an elaborate game she plans to orchestrate with ruthless precision.
Sumptuously photographed by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Sean Bobbitt and featuring exquisitely detailed production design from Cara Brower, Hedda ushers us headlong into a milieu of decadence and deception. At the center of it all is Thompson's magnetic performance as our single-minded, hedonistic heroine, a woman trapped within the confines of social decorum she cannot help but set fire to.
