"Many a film could be a scary story if you think about it hard enough. The uber-divisive reads a bit like a monster movie funneled through the decadence and debauchery of a gothic thriller. This year's If I Had Legs I'd Kick You feels like one long panic attack. And Hedda, the latest from writer-director Nia DaCosta, is another psychological hornet's nest cut from the same unassuming cloth."
"Thompson's Hedda is not just a bored housewife chafing against the confines of her cage. She's a skilled saboteur, a ticking time bomb surgically (yet a little subconsciously) tearing apart the life she's spent years carefully building. Having burned every bridge with past lovers, Hedda has since settled for the nebbish academic George (Tom Bateman). She's only just returned from her six-month honeymoon, but our heroine already feels trapped in a sprawling manor she subtly pressured George to buy."
Hedda adapts the classic play into a late-19th-century-set psychological thriller that feels strikingly modern through selective textual tweaks. Tessa Thompson portrays Hedda Tesman as a whip-smart, palpably lush, and deliriously wicked anti-heroine who actively sabotages the life she helped build. The character has burned past relationships and settled with the nebbish academic George, returning from a six-month honeymoon already feeling trapped in a manor she influenced him to buy. The film amplifies the story's pressure-cooker tension into a diabolical exploration of entitlement, emptiness, manipulation, and the monstrous feminine.
Read at Inverse
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]