Hedda

The 2025 film adapts the 1890s play setting it in the 1950s by casting Tessa Thompson in the starring role of Hedda Gabler, a once vibrant woman now stuck in a marriage and a house she has no love for and the key cog in a party full of mostly insufferable socialites being awful to each other for most of the 107-minute runtime.

Whiles suffering from some of the usual limitations you often see in stage adaptions which can't quite break free from the staged production, the spacious mansion and grounds (including a hedge maze) allows for a visual feast of time-period stylings, although the film is most notable for Thompson's performance.

In a script overstuffed with personal and professional jealousies, Hedda's machinations will lead to more than one death on the fateful night she and her husband (Tom Bateman) return from their honeymoon and throw a party in their far-too-extravagant new home in part to secure him a teaching position necessary to continue the newlyweds' lifestyle (which it's unclear whether either truly wants).

Along with Hedda struggling in her role as dutiful wife, the party is also complicated by the arrival of her husband's biggest competition, and Hedda's former lover (Nina Hoss, in a gender swap of the stage role) and new companion (Imogen Poots). Nicholas Pinnock plays the other pivotal role as an unscrupulous family friend with a lascivious interest in Hedda. It's not a must-see, but Hedda is a solid and entertaining film, especially for fans of Thompson looking for her to sink her teeth into a juicy, albeit unlikable, role.

• Title: Hedda
• IMDb: link