‘Hedda’ offers a queer upending of old play

“Hedda Gabler,” written by the Norwegian playwright Heinrik Ibsen in 1891, eventually became a feminist classic about a strong, passionate, unruly woman bored with her marriage and life, trying unsuccessfully to find a sense of fulfillment amid violence and female sexual repression. Director Nia DaCosta has given the drama a visually inventive cinematic queer power struggle reimagining, moving the action to a party in the English countryside during the 1950s with all its social constraints in her film adaptation, “Hedda,” now streaming on Amazon Prime.

It’s a bold attempt to be both classical and modern, yet the two don’t quite gel in the final distillation. It succeeds on a limited basis, but one can only applaud DaCosta’s audacious ingenuity even if Ibsen’s staid tragedy is now a flamboyant, at-times comic melodrama on 21st century sexual mores (with gender swaps) grafted onto 1950s conformity.

“Hedda” takes place over 24 hours at an opulent estate during an all-night over-the-top dinner party. Newlywed Hedda Tessman (Tessa Thompson), formerly known as Hedda Gabler, has returned from her six-month honeymoon with her ambitious, boring, academic husband George (Tom Bateman). Earlier the previous day she had attempted suicide, feeling alone in a huge villa, unhappy being a traditional wife and feeling the walls of the house caving in on her. She’s being questioned by police the next morning over a shooting that has taken place that night.

We then hear Hedda’s flashback version of what took place that prior day. George really loves her. She’s primarily interested in his money and social position so she won’t lose her status in elite society. Hedda’s aristocratic father General Gabler (she’s his bastard child) was the owner of the mansion but died in debt. The mansion is put up for sale, but George borrows money to buy it from his sleazy bachelor friend Judge Roland Brack (Nicholas Pinnock), who expects to be reimbursed once George lands a university position. He feels his generosity gives him power over the couple, including expecting carnal favors from Hedda. Professor Greenwood (Finbar Lynch), who’s considering hiring George, is invited to the party with his pretentious wife Tabitha (Mirren Mack), to encourage that effort, with George charging Hedda to charm Greenwood into giving him the position.

Hedda has invited her former lover Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss), who has a reputation for being a drunken troublemaker, despite her first book being a bestseller. She has sobered up and finished the manuscript for her second book, which she hopes will act as her comeback. She’s vying for the same position as George, but Hedda is intent on George securing that job so they can retain their place in upper-crust society. A series of deadly mind-games will ensue throughout the film.

Hedda is still in love with Eileen, but she has a new lover Thea (Imogen Pooks), Hedda’s schoolmate, who had hired Eileen as a tutor for her children. Thea has left her husband, helped Eileen become sober, and has evolved into a writing collaborator and soon-to-be live-in partner. Their manuscript concerns the future of sex in all its kinkier elements as part of a groundbreaking theory of sexual desire. Thea provides peace and confidence with warmth and affection so Eileen can do her work.

  Hedda is very jealous and schemes to cause Eileen to drink again, then winds up burning her manuscript, which had been “lost,” almost driving Eileen to the brink of suicide. The glamorous party becomes unbridled where everyone’s restraints are relaxed, exercising power plays over each other.

The most thrilling scene of the movie is a drunken Eileen narrating a raunchy account of a debauched sex fetish, thrilling her male audience, trying to be seen as their equal and win the professorship. Eileen is willing to be public about being a lesbian despite the homophobia that could cost her a job. Hedda cannot deal with her queerness, unable to tolerate being rejected by high society even though she’s living in a world that says she doesn’t count.

Hedda and Eileen bring out the worst in each other. It will all have near-tragic consequences leading to an ambiguous ending, very different from the play.   Hedda is a frustrated woman of ambition. She loves to party and she’s invited her free-spirited bohemian friends to counteract her husband’s prim academic acquaintances.

What Hedda desires is love and to feel respected but instead chooses power and control. She doesn’t have the courage of her convictions and her desire for freedom to exist as her own person conflicts with her desire for control in a chaotic world. Hedda is full of contradictions, wanting love but also money and status, as well as both loving and hating Eileen. Jealousy and resentment fuel her plot to shatter her. The seemingly glamourous Hedda, with her cunning intellect, can’t disguise her ugly sowing of discord and chaos nor the fact that she’s a deeply unhappy woman, probably resentful that she’s living a lie.  

Thompson is quite effective as Hedda, conveying her sophistication, restlessness, sensuality, and calculating toxic demeanor, resisting the temptation to render her sympathetic as an anti-hero. Thompson, who is a biracial American actress, however, overemphasizes her English accent and mannerisms. In the play, Hedda is enigmatic but here comes across as a charismatic manipulator, so there’s insufficient ambiguity. It’s style over substance, the exact opposite of the play.  

The wondrous performance is that of the incomparable German actress Hoss, who brilliantly reveals Eileen being drawn to Hedda knowing it will result in her downfall. The two women have an erotic, sizzling chemistry between them. The moment Hoss appears, the audience is drawn to her; that sexy milkmaid dress that almost makes her seem naked is riveting.

Hoss’ intelligence can’t stop her from losing her grip, searching for her lost manuscript, but also trying to parse Hedda’s feelings for her. Her relapse is embarrassing yet also freeing, in that she can say whatever she wants. It’s a career best for Hoss, last seen as Cate Blanchett’s orchestra conductor’s lover in “Tar.”  

Pooks superbly telegraphs Thea’s realization that she is being overshadowed by Hedda. However, Hoss so commands the screen, we quickly forget about Thea, who fades into the background. All the men are caricatures and exist only to be pawns used by the women for their own purposes.   The dialogue is sharply written with numerous lacerating lines in this talkfest of a film.

The ravishing production design and impeccable costumes are flawless, beautifully echoing that time period. The camera follows the constantly-moving Hedda as she floats through her party with the pace rarely letting up, so you never feel bored. It’s gripping but there is an emotional vacuity at its core, so you admire the effort but don’t love it.

It’s wildly inventive but too clever for its own good. Yet the thrilling moments make it worthwhile even if the whole isn’t greater than the sum of its parts, sexual hijinks and sabotage taking precedence over the play’s message of the conflict between social expectations and individual freedom/independence.  

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