Dive into the complex world of Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt,” where a #MeToo scandal unravels an academic community. Julia Roberts delivers a captivating performance, but does the film truly grapple with its timely themes? Our review reveals all.
Luca Guadagnino, known for his masterful explorations of desire and human psychology, ventures into complex territory with his latest feature, “After the Hunt.” This film, arriving with significant buzz from the festival circuit, boldly grapples with a post-#MeToo sexual assault scandal within the cloistered world of academia. While featuring a stirring performance from Julia Roberts, the film navigates a tricky landscape, prompting intense debate among film critics and audiences alike regarding its ultimately underwhelming script.
The film immediately sets an intriguing, almost confrontational tone. Opening frames featuring stark white text against black, listing the cast including Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield in alphabetical order, deliberately evoke the style of a controversial filmmaker, signaling Guadagnino’s intent to interrogate the rhetoric surrounding alleged abuse. This audacious creative choice, coupled with a prologue announcing the setting as Yale, promises a deep dive into an intellectual community rocked by scandal, reminiscent of academia-centered mysteries like those from Donna Tartt.
At its core, “After the Hunt” centers on Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts), a philosophy professor at Yale, whose life unravels following a grave accusation. Her student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), alleges sexual assault against a colleague, Hank (Andrew Garfield), throwing Alma into a moral quagmire. The narrative meticulously untwists Alma’s conflicted loyalties, as she struggles to reconcile her allegiance to Hank, who may be romantically interested in her, with Maggie’s harrowing confession, testing the bonds within their intellectual circle.
Despite Guadagnino’s signature invigorating direction, often marked by heightened immersions into subjective states as seen in “Call Me By Your Name” and “Queer,” the film’s ambition is notably hampered by Nora Garrett’s debut screenplay. The script, though attempting to dissect generational divides between Gen Z and Gen X, often feels overintellectualized and bizarrely retrograde. It reduces characters to mouthpieces for “hot topics,” leading to a perceived indecision about its stance on post-#MeToo contexts and intricate identity politics inquiries.
Julia Roberts delivers a truly career-recharging dramatic performance as Alma. She embodies a secretly hard-boozing, self-destructive academic, exhibiting a fascinating dare-to-be-unlikable quality reminiscent of her role in “Closer.” Roberts masterfully portrays Alma’s internal struggle, her enigmatic past, and her perhaps too-close fondness for her younger colleague, Hank, making her a compelling, if deeply flawed, protagonist in this intense #MeToo drama.
The film, however, often shies away from truly subversive depths, leaving palpable undercurrents largely unexplored. For instance, the simmering sapphic friction between Alma and Maggie, subtly hinted at through lingering close-ups and shared aesthetic details, feels strangely sanded down. Similarly, the racial politics concerning Edebiri’s character, a queer Black student whose academic worthiness is implicitly questioned, remain notably unresolved, representing a missed opportunity for a more incisive film analysis.
Ultimately, “After the Hunt” strives for moral ambiguity but paradoxically ends up feeling stark and indecisive. While Guadagnino remains a director of immense power and skill, particularly in capturing complex human dynamics, the script’s ideas appear ripped from an earlier era, transposed onto our own with a broad-strokes equivocation that undermines its potential impact. This movie critique highlights that despite its powerful lead performance, the film falls short of delivering a truly revolutionary statement on its timely and sensitive subject matter.
