‘Hedda’ review: Tessa Thompson gets adorably wild and evil

“What a terrible story! What a terrible play!” A theater critic for the Daily Telegraph lamented after the London premiere of Hedda Gabler in 1891. Victorian audiences were repelled by Henrik Ibsen’s attractive new bride who seemed to have it all – the luxurious house, the doting husband – only to be utterly bored.

But writer-director Nia DaCosta (Candyman, The Marvels) and her star Tessa Thompson understand Hedda down to the beautiful poison contained within her molecules. Their meandering return, set from dusk to hangover in a drunken bacchanal, is vibrant and brutally energetic. With apologies to Ibsen’s ghost, DaCosta’s edits only intensified his anger. I don’t think this long-dead critic would have liked this “Hadda” any better. I think it’s divine.

Hedda Thompson is an intelligent, status-conscious girl raised to believe that her only purpose is to be the wife of a rich man. With no hobbies, no career, or interest in motherhood, her only creative outlets are squandering money and manipulating the success of her husband, the middlebrow academic George (Tom Bateman), who has such a tenuous grip on his bride that his last name might as well be attached to hers with duct tape. (It’s a Tessmann and rarely used.) Hedda doesn’t like George. In fact, she seems to think he’s a whiny little worm. But she is determined to secure a promotion for him to accommodate her expensive tastes.

If Hedda had been born a man, she would have led armies into battle like her late father, General Gabler, who fathered her out of wedlock. Instead, it launches its aggression against civilians. Using her offensive charm, Hedda induces gullible couples to cheat, recovering alcoholics to drink and depressed people to wander around in the dark with a gun. Some of her chaos is calculated, most of it out of resentment that others live braver, more fulfilling lives. It all looks like a cat tipping over glasses of water only to see them shatter. Like the bad seductress in “Dangerous Liaisons,” she warns that frustrated women aren’t just a danger to themselves—they’re a danger to the society that made them.

Inspired by her anti-hero, DaCosta manipulates Ibsen to suit her own ends. She updates the play’s setting to 1950s England, an era similar in spirit in which well-bred women were domesticated. (I can’t wait for someone to make a version among the craftsmen of Utah.) From there, DaCosta cleverly tightened the narrative, which included a key scene at an off-stage bachelorette party to which Hedda was clearly not invited. “It’s a pity that the beautiful lady can’t be there, unseen,” Hedda complained to Ibsen because she had been left at home while the men were preparing for the celebration.

In DaCosta’s version, the entire drama unfolds over a martini and cocaine rage at Hedda’s mansion, a party she throws to impress George’s potential new boss, Professor Greenwood (Finbar Lynch), who she hears has a bohemian streak. In an event of her own on home turf, Haida could not have been more clearly in command. She rallies guests to throw former classmate Thea (Imogen Poots), a serious, miserable drip, into a nearby lake and has the entire room rocking to a dance band’s cover of “It’s Oh So Quiet,” the hit song that Icelandic pop singer Björk would become famous for half a century later. It’s a great song with rising mania – You blew the fuse, Zing Boom! The devil breaks free, zing boom! – which depicts Hedda’s frenetic mood shifts.

We know this evening is going to go wrong from the film’s opening shot in which Hedda is confronted by two policemen who keep interrupting her explanation of the past 24 hours. “Where should I start?” She says with stifled indignation. As we pause to watch the night unfold, a shot of Hedda surveying the crowds from upstairs seems like she’s looking at a game board—a clue, perhaps? -With a weapon hidden in every room. What is the most pressing threat? The pistols you keep in a leather box, the unstable crystal chandelier, or the deep lake water outside?

Thompson is great in this role. Even the way you bite a cherry off a cocktail toothpick carries risk. I first saw her in the title role in “Romeo and Juliet” at a 99-seat theater in Pasadena when she was about 20 years old (there’s a lot of talent in our small theater scene), so it’s a nice reminder that the funny and emotional actress in the “Thor” and “Creed” franchises is also a hell of a good classic performer and a worthy star in her own right.

She wears her beautiful Hida mask with confidence—red lips, bushy cheekbones, a cold demeanor—and allows it to slip periodically. Editor Jacob Schulsinger often allows Hedda a little hesitation before she sets out to destroy people’s lives, long enough to know she’s considering the consequences. “Sometimes I can’t help myself, I suddenly do things on a whim,” she confesses to curious judge Brack (Nicholas Pennock), revealing a sliver of vulnerability. She’s almost (almost) asking for help. However, the judge just wants to maneuver her into bed. How boring.

DaCosta boldly places race and gender at the forefront of Ibsen’s tale. She replaces Eilert, Hedda’s former lover, with a lesbian named Elin (the swaggering Nina Hoss), a flamboyant author who openly challenges conventions and is Georg’s job-hunting rival (and the only person Hedda enjoys kissing). If previous incarnations of Hedda didn’t dare challenge social norms when she was white and straight, her being black and queer adds a lot of extra stakes that the screenplay doesn’t need to say out loud. The new tension is there in a few whispers, as when Hedda hears one of the guests mutter that their hostess is “darker than I thought she would be.” Hedda does not acknowledge the slight. This means admitting weakness. She simply starts destroying the amplifier in the next scene.

What is wiser? Is Eileen’s insistence on confronting the boys and accepting her to the fullest, or is Hedda sneaking around and directing everyone’s destinies behind the scenes? They cannot work together – they are doomed to tear each other to shreds. As much as we delight in watching Hedda’s rampage, it is painful to watch these two formidable women turn each other into hysterics (to use the medical diagnosis of the day).

From a 21st century perspective, both have the right to be crazy, and both may be mentally ill. DaCosta doesn’t offer judgment, but immerses us so deep into Hedda’s headspace that we can hear how certain things turn her on. The insults hit her with a knife-like hiss of air. New charts bring it to a head towards Hildur Guðnadóttir’s loud and rhythmic score.

Costume designer Lindsay Pugh did a fantastic job outfitting the film’s central female roles. Hedda wears lead-like strands of pearls strangling her neck and a jade-colored gown that seems to turn a jealous shade of green. When her rival, Poot’s Thea, arrives in her underwear, Hedda forces her to wear a hideous dress with annoying bows and an unattractive skirt. Potts, her nose raw and red, her character kicking when she’s down, looks with frightening courage, confident that the moral fiber will unravel Hedda’s ugly fears.

But Pugh’s genius put Elaine not in some kind of masculine suit but in a bombshell dress that highlights her curves like a primal goddess. It’s pure feminine power – just like the film itself – and when Elaine walks into a room full of her male colleagues, that dress reveals how quickly the tenor of a film can shift from dread to mockery and how little wiggle room she or any woman has for error.