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\n\t\u201cWhat are you up to?\u201d someone asks our leading lady in a plot so thick with cattiness, intrigue and betrayal that it\u2019s often hard to work out anyone\u2019s true motivations. You might ask the same question of director Nia DaCosta<\/a>, following three very modern genre movies with an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen\u2019s late 19th century stage classic, a period drama at that. But despite a certain staginess, and a tendency for the plot to suddenly stop to make way for the acting, Hedda<\/a> is actually a genuine attempt to mine something new from the old text, a compelling fusion of Emerald Fennell\u2019s Saltburn and Stephen Fry\u2019s Bright Young Things.<\/p>\n \n\tWhen we first meet Hedda (Tessa Thompson<\/a>), she is being questioned by the police about a shooting, of which she has only a dim memory (\u201cIt was a party, after all\u201d). Hedda\u2019s smirk speaks volumes as the film flashes back to that fateful night. We\u2019re in a stately home in England, sometime in the 1950s, and Hedda Tesman, n\u00e9e Gabler, is throwing a ball. As we are about to learn, Hedda, a general\u2019s daughter with a wild past, has recently tied the knot with George (Tom Bateman), an academic. George is fishing for a major teaching post but is disconcerted to find that, as well as the board of professors he is trying to impress, Hedda has also invited his main rival for the job.<\/p>\n \n\tSo far, so much the play, but DaCosta has a trick up her sleeve: George\u2019s nemesis is now female, a woman named Eileen (Nina Hoss<\/a>), Hedda\u2019s ex-lover. Eileen\u2019s imminent arrival is made even more dramatic when a younger woman named Thea (Imogen Poots<\/a>) turns up at Hedda\u2019s door in a state of distress. Thea recently broke up with Eileen, but the two have written a book together, making it hard for Thea to make a clean break. But when Eileen makes her entrance, she no longer seems to be the same woman we\u2019ve heard about: sober and, like Hedda, she has married well (\u201cYou\u2019ve never cured of your vices, you resist them,\u201d she explains). Eileen, hoping to use the party for her own advantage, has brought with her the manuscript of her book \u2014 which Hedda knows is the only copy, and she wants it.<\/p>\n \n\tPerhaps understanding that a woman stealing a book from a bag isn\u2019t exactly Mission: Impossible stuff, DaCosta reframes the story as a kind of Wildean black comedy, with lashings of ribald innuendo (notably the eyebrows that raised when George innocently declares that his wife \u201cloves eating out\u201d). In that respect, Thompson is perfect, playing Hedda as a stealth socialite ninja who\u2019s always one step ahead of the competition. \u201cBefore you were domesticated, you were like fire,\u201d a guest tells her, and, despite Hedda\u2019s surface layer of gowns and finery, Thompson\u2019s layered work means it does seem possible.<\/p>\n \n\tGenerously, Thompson\u2019s performance leaves room for two more, the first being Poots\u2019 low-key but impressive Thea, a mousy woman who arrives wet and bedraggled, causing Hedda to dress her in her own clothes (a gesture that has more than one meaning for Hedda, who\u2019s still in love with Eileen). It\u2019s Hoss, however, that sets fire to the screen. As the supposedly \u201creformed\u201d Eileen, Hoss really gets to tear the roof off, spectacularly falling off the wagon and humiliating herself more and more throughout the evening.<\/p>\n \n\tDespite the film\u2019s ominous introduction, the ending doesn\u2019t quite live up to all the foreshadowing \u2014 to outdo Chekhov, there are at least four instances of guns being waved \u2014 but DaCosta perhaps isn\u2019t so committed to the plot as she is to the people. Unusually for a party movie, the revelry seems quite real, and makes a very intriguing backdrop to the story, becoming more and more debauched as Hedda gets deeper and deeper in the weeds with her plot against Eileen and, it even seems, the world. Salient use of Roxy Music\u2019s \u201cLove Is the Drug\u201d rounds things off nicely, a wryly ironic comment on everything we\u2019ve just seen.<\/p>\n