Tessa Thompson is a bold actress who has starred in Marvel superhero adventures ("Thor: Love and Thunder," 2022); a cerebral science-fiction TV series ("Westworld," 2016-2022); and delicate period dramas ("Passing," 2021). Because of her kaleidoscopic work, she's an interesting one to watch today. Her latest work is the title role in the film "Hedda" now available on the Amazon Prime streaming platform.
"Hedda" is adapted from the famous play "Hedda Gabler" by 19th century Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play was first produced on stage in 1891 and has been adapted for the screen numerous times (most popularly in 1975 with Glenda Jackson and in 1981 with Diana Rigg).
While hosting a party in her large fancy home, the newly married Hedda Tesman secretly struggles with her stormy ambitions inside a boring domestic life. This party is partly for Hedda to introduce her academic husband George (Tom Bateman, "Thirteen Lives," 2022) to a professor at a local university and secure George's hiring for a vacant teaching position there. But when another guest named Eileen (Nina Hoss, "Tar," 2022) arrives at the party, Hedda learns Eileen is in contention for the same teaching position as George (and Eileen is Hedda's former lover).
From this description you can easily figure this plot is heavy and complex with multiple characters, backstories, and unspoken desires. To ensure her comfortable future, and keep her ego intact, Hedda uses her beauty, her sex appeal, and her sharply scheming mind to manipulate or betray those around her. Champagne bottles flow, fireplaces crackle, lipstick is smeared, and pistols are shot, pushing Hedda's party toward tragedy.
Director and screenwriter Nia DaCosta ("Candyman," 2020) has adapted the play for this film, and many scenes provide well-functioning dialogue evoking mystery, treachery, and lust while simultaneously revealing each character's position. The setting is highly stylized with singing, dancing, cigarette smoke, corseted bosoms, and vibrant 1950s costumes. Because of this exuberant styling, "Hedda" reminds me of other opulent historical literature adaptations like "The Tempest" (2010) and "Anna Karenina" (2012).
"Hedda" is also given some contemporary twists, a-la "Marie Antoinette" (2006), using color blind casting, aggressive music, switching a romantic male role to a female one, and using glittering fireworks (both literal and sexual). In fact, there's so much sexual yearning and playfulness in this, I literally thought to myself halfway through, "Should I even keep watching this film? Or should I climb into a four-poster bed draped in a lacy white canopy, take off all my clothes, drink a bottle of wine, tangle my body in the bed sheets, and seduce a lover from my past?" This film doesn't seem to know when to stop with the passion and sex...or at least when to cool it down.
Much of the play is rearranged to fit into this film's one hour and 47 minutes. Because the director packs so much content from the play into this film, some scenes feel rushed or crowded with lots of psychological ground to cover which then influences the title character's decisions. This rushing also makes the transitions from one scene to another feel a bit schizophrenic or unfocused. And couldn't some of the sequences of drinking and dancing have been trimmed to spend less time setting the scene and more time actually telling the story?
Even though "Hedda" is a period film adapted from a revered work of theater, it's less a sophisticated literary adaptation and more of a steamy erotic boddice-ripper. Being drenched in lascivious desire sometimes takes away the power of the actual acting and feminist messages in this film (like the sexual overtones are a shiny jewel only meant for adornment which then ends up hypnotizing everyone). But sometimes the lustfulness adds to the seriousness of these people's lives and their emotional depths. It just gets frustrating seeing that lustfulness applied so thickly and so erratically.
Overall, the film does an okay job despite its many visually alluring distractions.
