Directed by Nia DaCosta | Written by DaCosta, based on the play Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen | ▲▲1/2 | On Prime

Nia DaCosta bounces back from the good time but bad box office of The Marvels with an adaptation of Ibsen, something more tragic and arty, with all the associated ambitions. It’s best at being a portrait of a desperately unhappy woman looking to exert some control over her future at any cost, coaxing a complex, intense performance out of the lead, Tessa Thompson, who imports her Valkyrie accent from the MCU.

Hedda is a queer woman hosting a raging party after her hurried wedding to an academic, George (Tom Bateman), in a house she hates, hoping the event helps secure her husband’s future employment at the local university. However, Eileen (Nina Hoss), a former lover of Hedda’s attends the party with ambitions for the same position.

So far, so stagey, but as the night progresses and the guests get more inebriated, things get a lot more interesting: Hoss, in maybe her best role since Tár, gets a terrific monologue to a library full of leering men. Her desperation takes control of the narrative, while Imogen Poots and Nicholas Pinnock, as dramatic but impotent stakeholders, watch in a mix of fascination and despair.

DaCosta embraces the play’s interest in women’s power and mental health in a man’s world, adding gay and racial overtones, more than one love triangle, and a too-percussive score by Hildur Guðnadóttir. It’s a good looking picture, and Hoss and Thompson are both terrific, but the over-torqued style tends to obscure the film’s themes rather than illuminate them.

From the start we know there’ll be a shooting, and we know Hedda likes her guns — this isn’t Chekov’s Gun, it’s Ibsen’s, which I guess makes it even more inevitable.