HEDDA – Review by Julia Swift
Director Nia DaCosta doesn’t deliver the easy, beautiful, genteel world of manners audiences have come to expect from a period piece. Rather, Hedda plunges into the raw, electric undercurrents of desire, resentment, and power struggles that define its heroine. DaCosta reimagines Henrik Ibsen’s canonical play not by transposing it to a contemporary setting, but by situating it in an undefined modern world—a realm of opulence, racial and sexual diversity, and persistent social unease. This ambiguity of time and place allows the film to explore timeless themes of female repression, alienation, and identity within a visually sumptuous yet psychologically claustrophobic environment.
The production design is a masterclass in symbolic confinement. Ornate wallpapers in rich jewel tones, one featuring a peacock motif, another dominated by overwhelming geometric repetition, seem to press inward on the characters. Hedda’s emotional restraint is mirrored in the suffocating decor. The mansion’s grandeur is undercut by the presence of incongruous paintings, which, rather than complementing the space, reflect Hedda’s fractured interiority. A painting with a wheel-like design of women’s legs is caught by the camera often and adds kinetic motion, disembodied sexuality and even a gruesome objectification subtly playing on the audience’s subconscious. These visual choices, paired with deliberate blocking and spatial choreography, render the home a gilded cage. Outside, the lake offers a stark contrast: simple, open, and elemental. It beckons Hedda, yet she resists its call until the film’s final act, when her entry into the water signifies not leisure but existential resolution.
Tessa Thompson’s portrayal of Hedda is tightly wound, her energy simmering beneath a veneer of control until it erupts with devastating force. Yet it is Nina Hoss’s performance as Eileen Lovborg, a reimagined female version of Ibsen’s male character Eilert Lovborg, that provides the film’s emotional apex. Hoss imbues Eileen with a volatile blend of passion, pride, shame, and fragility, crafting a character whose instability is both magnetic and tragic. Her scenes elevate the film beyond its formal elegance, offering raw emotional texture that lingers long after the credits.
The film’s jazz-inflected score adds a layer of dissonance, evoking both sophistication and unease. It underscores the tension between surface beauty and internal chaos, a duality that defines the film’s aesthetic and thematic core. While some viewers may interpret the film’s spatial limitations and theatrical pacing as budgetary constraints or stylistic rigidity, DaCosta’s direction makes clear that this confinement is intentional. The audience is not merely observing Hedda’s entrapment; they are experiencing it.
Hedda is not designed for passive consumption. It resists conventional entertainment and instead demands introspection. For viewers attuned to its emotional and symbolic language, the film offers a profound meditation on female identity, repression, and the cost of self-containment. For others, it may feel suffocating. But therein lies its power: Hedda is a cinematic experience that dares to trap its audience in the same beautiful prison as its protagonist, urging us to break free of our own societal expectations and constraints.
