Though it’s been a minute since she’s had a film to really sink her teeth into, “Hedda” proves you should never bet against writer-director Nia DaCosta. 
Taking on the Henrik Ibsen play “Hedda Gabler” and making it something entirely her own, her latest is one that’s often practically vibrating with energy. Though playing out primarily in a single luxurious house in mid-century England, it never feels constrained or limited. Much of this is due to how the film thrives in everything from the way cinematographer Sean Bobbitt shoots every slyly chaotic scene with precision to how the propulsive score by Hildur Guðnadóttir gives each development an extra jolt of electricity and the excellent production design by Cara Brower makes all the rooms we wander through feel authentic without being stuffy. It’s a film where every detail of the craft is worth taking in even when the story starts to lose steam a bit towards the end. 
READ MORE: Toronto Film Fest 2025 Preview: 35 Must-See Movies To WatchThat the film also reunites the filmmaker with a mesmerizing Tessa Thompson, who previously starred in DaCosta’s feature debut “Little Woods,” and sees the performer eat up absolutely every morsel of the movie, makes everything that much more of a fun time. Right from the opening scene, you can feel the fun that both DaCosta and Thompson are having with a project that, for one thing, isn’t trapped in the world of Marvel superheroes. It just feels more creatively free and defined by a genuine desire to try out something quite new for both of them. There is much that can be a little less engaging when Thompson isn’t in the picture, but this ends up being water under the bridge. In every cutting line or withering stare, you can’t help but get swept up in the experience. Though the film stumbles about a bit near the end, Thompson and DaCosta are still able to keep steady even as the characters grow increasingly intoxicated. 
The story centers on Hedda (Thompson), who is throwing a party with her husband George (Tom Bateman) for all their friends to come out to. With every new arrival, you can already see Hedda sizing them up and seeing how she can use them to have a bit of fun. This gets kicked up a notch when the author Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss) arrives with her latest book on sexuality, and we learn that she is going for the same job as George. That Hedda also has a history with Eileen complicates things even further, and a looming sense that catastrophe may be waiting just around the corner starts to take hold.
Though most of the film is built around conversations in rooms, never once is it boring, as there is always some bold choice being made by the performers or a formal flourish that heightens the emotion. As the night goes on, we see how Hedda is plotting to ruin Eileen in ways big and small so George can get the job over her, though this may also bring about the destruction of her supposedly picture-perfect life. In one killer cutaway moment to Kathryn Hunter, who plays the sole full-time staff member for Hedda working in the kitchen, we witness all the illusions of wealth that the couple are putting forth get taken down. It’s extraneous to much of the story, but it’s also precisely what makes the film so fun.
It’s okay if you haven’t read the Ibsen play before seeing “Hedda” as, despite there being this sufficiently solid narrative core to build around, the story is less interesting than the way it is shot and staged. You could discuss and evaluate how the filmmaker takes us in a different direction from the setting to the time period, though it also just feels like DaCosta wanted to create some room for herself to play around. When she explicitly references Spike Lee at one key turning point with a double dolly shot, it makes you too want to practically levitate out of your chair and drift forward into the screen.
It’s continually all these various formal decisions being made that make “Hedda” into something more than just another adaptation of a classic play. It’s darkly funny, more than a little grim, and yet consistently captivating to watch. Even when there are a couple of stretches where Thompson gets pushed to the side and nobody else can quite bring the same commanding presence she does, she always makes a grand return just when the film needs her to. [B+]
“Hedda” is in theaters starting October 22 and available to stream on Prime Video on October 29.
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