The star is playing Hedda in the latest retelling of Henrik Ibsen’s iconic play
BY ELLA GAUCI, IMAGE BY AMAZON MGM STUDIOS
Get ready to watch Henrik Ibsen’s iconic play Hedda Gabler like you’ve never seen it before in Nia DaCosta’s new sapphic thriller. Starring queer icon Tessa Thompson as Hedda, alongside Nina Hoss and Imogen Poots, this complex love story explores the constraints placed on women in the 1950s.
In the new trailer for this thriller, Hedda (Thomspon) is seen to fall into a dangerous infatuation with her academic ex-lover Eileen Lovberg (Hoss). Unlike the original story, Hedda is not looking for escape from her loveless marriage in a new man. With longing glances and gorgeously queer moments of lust, this new adaptation takes the iconic play into queer chaos. Throw in the fact that Eileen has rocked up with her new lover, Thea (Poots), and you’re onto a sapphic nightmare.
The film follows a weekend party thrown by Hedda and her devoted husband, which her ex-lover promptly attends. Speaking to Vanity Fair, director Nia DeCosta said: “Hedda is someone who wants people’s animals to come out. She just feels like everyone is cowardly, everyone’s lying. She has this deepening emptiness inside of her that makes her do things she doesn’t understand – and she is living in a world that she doesn’t get.”
Nia continued: “The tragedy is that she herself will never know herself, and she herself doesn’t understand why she does the things she does. And these people around her suffer because of it.”
This is not the first time that Hedda has been interpreted as sapphic. Mauckingbird Theatre similarly gender-swapped the role of Hedda’s ex-lover to be a woman, and Harriet Madeley’s recent adaptation followed suit. There seems no more apt play to look at through a queer lens than one that focuses on society’s restrictions on women and who they can love.
You can watch the trailer for Hedda now.
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