Julia Roberts Superbly Leads a Triangle of Pretension in Luca Guadagnino’s Aimless ‘After the Hunt’

Alci Rengifo

You can have magnificent ingredients in a film but the story must always be there. Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt” is undoubtedly well crafted with an expert filmmaker at the helm and a cast that could deliver under any conditions. It also does not shy away from challenging subject matter. This is Guadagnino’s attempt at making drama out of our cultural landscape in the wake of the #MeToo movement. The setup is instantly seductive, taking place within the Ivy League academic halls of Yale, where tenure is a track towards a comfortable and, hopefully, fulfilling life. Its characters are charged with ego, classism and intellectual pretension. Where the Italian auteur leaves us in the dark is on exactly what his film wants to convey.

It’s Yale circa 2019. Alma (Julia Roberts) is an alluring philosophy professor giving dense lectures on Michel Foucault. Her mind is dominated by the possibility of soon getting tenure. She already lives a comfortable enough life with psychiatrist husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg). In the evenings, they host dinner parties with colleagues like Hank (Andrew Garfield), a younger philosophy professor still in the adjunct zone. At such a dinner we meet Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), a doctoral candidate (whose parents donate vast sums of money to the university) clearly eager to impress Alma. This is the sort of crowd that intensely chats and cracks jokes about Nietzsche, Heidegger and Freud. Alma and Hank are particularly close friends, though we sense something else in the air, as well as from Maggie towards Alma. Maggie and Hank soon leave the party like other guests calling it a night. The following afternoon, Alma is stunned to find Maggie petrified at her doorstep, before claiming that Hank sexually assaulted her.

Guadagnino and screenwriter Nora Garrett set up a mystery that does not really become the focal point so much as the detonator for a domino effect that is both intriguing and absurd. This is a director who can create simmering patience, as he does with “Call Me by Your Name” and “Queer,” or suddenly get kinetic with “Challengers” and “I Am Love.” “After the Hunt” falls somewhere around the latter category, moving with a good pace that can sustain our attention for 2 hours and 19 minutes. The performances are great, and some individual moments could work almost as short films. Andrew Garfield has a scene that would be gold in any actor’s reel, where he arrogantly brushes off Maggie’s accusations while discussing them with Alma over seafood. He scarfs down a large platter as Alma watches, cheerfully claiming the student is a no-talent plagiarizer who is using her privileged background to get ahead.

A rather daring move is to never truly make anyone in this story likable. Guadagnino uses an anthropological eye to present an enclosed world of pretension and bloated self-importance. We never see what happened between Maggie and Hank, but he throws a violent fit when the school fires him. Maggie is queer with a nonbinary partner, and sometimes the screenplay seems to poke fun at the terms for identity propelled by Gen Z. Guadagnino does not seem to be for or against any of it. A character like campus psychiatrist Dr. Kim Sayers (played with excellent deadpan delivery by Chloë Sevigny) complains that this generation is too coddled and entitled. At a local bar she’s elated when the Smiths play over the speakers because of the vague allusion to Morrissey now being taboo among a woke crowd. Yet there is little doubt Maggie is entitled and bratty. Frederik is actually brutally on point in subtly dismissing her as mediocre. Then again, Frederik is the kind of snob who becomes horribly rude around a minor intellect like Maggie, making an unwise dinner visit by the student very uncomfortable, and so on. 

These actors are all so good we can just watch them snipe and ponder for hours. Julia Roberts again proves the winning smile and sweet girl cheer that brought her immense fame can be buried for two hours. She becomes a confident Ivy League figure who barely flinches, only slightly when the world begins to close in on her because of Maggie and Hank. Michael Stuhlbarg cooks while blasting classical music in the kitchen, like an acidic cousin of his warm academic from “Call Me by Your Name.” All we are left wondering about is the end game for these personalities. In a need for melodramatic tools, the script throws in unnecessary little twists like Maggie conveniently finding an envelope with shocking secrets from Alma’s past under a bathroom sink. Garrett’s screenplay can’t help but throw in stale spice with the idea that Alma once loved someone else other than Frederik, something which festers beneath the surface of their rather boring marriage. As if forgetting why friendships are rupturing, later on we see an odd scene between Hank and Alma inside a moody apartment, where a brief moment hints that the young professor might indeed have been capable of what Maggie has accused him of.

“After the Hunt” is a collection of sketches consisting of scattered ideas about various cultural topics. It seems Guadagnino wants to present material inspired by the #MeToo movement, changing sexual language, questions of power and the uncertainty of accusations without evidence, but without the boldness of a connecting central theme for it all. As expected, the technical elements are flawless. Cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed almost evokes ‘70s dramas and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score creates a moody ambiance. Yet we are left gasping empty air. Instead of subtly, “After the Hunt” settles for frustrating vagueness. There is a moment where Alma verbally demolishes a student who tries to apply Gen Z grievances about identity and gender to a discussion of Homer. A producer should have done the same with this auteur to get to the bottom of what this movie is truly about. Guadagnino is the kind of director that audiences find themselves patiently awaiting his next title, but here he leaves us waiting for the point.

“After the Hunt” releases Oct. 10 in New York and Los Angeles and expands Oct. 17 nationwide.