TIFF Review: Tessa Thompson in Hedda

Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler invents a character, the eponymous Hedda Gabler, who is considered one of the greatest female dramatic roles ever written. Hedda is a tragic and doomed figure, often compared to Hamlet. Nia DaCosta, adapting Ibsen herself for a new cinematic iteration dubbed simply Hedda, discards Ibsen’s gloom and doom for style and lesbians and c-ntery. Hedda stars Tessa Thompson and she is deliciously wicked and unrepentantly vile as the dissipated Hedda Gabler Tesman, a recently married social climber who treats the people in her life like bugs pinned to a board.

DaCosta uproots Ibsen’s 19th-century Scandinavian tale to 1950s Britain and infuses her film with indelible style. Linsday Pugh’s costume design and Cara Brower’s production design (with set decoration by Stella Fox) are heavenly, with women donning New Look styles and an English country house revitalized by Art Deco influence. Thompson, as Hedda, spends the film in an exquisite green tulle gown, as poisonous in hue as her personality—she’s a walking shingle of Scheele’s green, pouring venom into everyone around her. Her country house is a new acquisition but precariously held—it’s only with the help of the creepy Judge Brack (Nicholas Pinnock) and a lucrative but unsecured new job for her husband that Hedda can afford her stately manse.

Speaking of her husband, George Tesman (Tom Bateman), he’s a drip. One thing about all the men in Hedda is that they’re losers and drips, contributing nothing to the women in their lives. George is the Drip In Chief, a wimpy academic besotted with Hedda to the point of blindness—he thinks she loves him, bless his heart—and insecure and unable to commit the academic assassination required to secure a fat professorship and guarantee he and Hedda can keep their new house. Hedda throws a party with the purpose of persuading Professor Greenwood (Finbar Lynch) to hire George, who spends most of the party whining or clinging to Hedda, like a drip.

The women of Hedda, however, are fabulously c-nty, a bitch pack assembled in hell. Hedda is simply awful, selfish and cruel and vain, and Thompson portrays her with palpable delight. She is having so much fun her energy propels the entire film. Imogen Poots is equally good, though in the other direction, as Hedda’s former schoolmate, Thea, who is uptight and edgy about entering Hedda’s domain. Thea remembers Hedda’s casual cruelty from school, and is the only person not taken in by Hedda’s lady of the manor act. 

And then there is Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss), a gender-swapped Ejlert Løvborg. DaCosta makes her Hedda all about women loving women, as Hedda and Eileen are locked in a bitter ex toxic death spiral that sucks in George and Thea, too. The gender flip also adds a new dimension to the competition for the academic post, as Eileen isn’t just competing for a plum position, but for respect in a male-dominated field, which further adds layers to the game Hedda plays with Eileen’s reputation and academic standing. But it also gives Eileen an edge over Hedda, as she is living the openly queer life Hedda is afraid to embrace. 

Throughout the course of an increasingly debauched house party, Hedda maneuvers to secure the professorship for George—who contributes zero to Hedda’s plans or life—while also confronting her history with Eileen, who is now sober thanks to Thea’s support. Hedda is jeering about Eileen’s sobriety, and the two women snipe at each other about the ability for people to change. Unsurprisingly, Hedda is a cynic who doesn’t believe in a capacity to change and uses Eileen’s alcoholism against her. All’s fair in love and crushing your rivals. Eileen, meanwhile, is unable to withstand Hedda’s taunting, which leads to humiliating herself in front of her male peers and a disastrous confrontation with a gun. 

DaCosta’s film is an example of c-nt cinema, it’s rife with bitches and cutdowns and comebacks and glamour and betrayal. Hedda is a hideous person, no doubt, but it is incredibly fun watching Thompson swan through the film with devious aplomb as Hedda plots and plans and f-cks people over. She will win at all costs, your only hope is to never fall under her gimlet gaze. Hedda is a vicious film, as unapologetically toxic and cruel as it is stylish and fun, anchored by Tessa Thompson’s beautifully c-nty performance.

Hedda will play in some theaters from October 22, 2025 and be released on Prime Video on October 29, 2025.

 

Attached - Tessa Thompson, Imogen Poots, and Nia DaCosta yesterday in New York for the Hedda premiere, and the cast in Toronto a few days ago.