Since the #MeToo movement ripped through Hollywood a little under a decade ago, there have been a spate of misconduct stories on the big screen, from Kitty Green’s The Assistant to Maria Schrader’s She Said. The latest in this contemporary sub-genre wave is psychological thriller After the Hunt by director Luca Guadagnino. Unravelling in and around Yale University, the plot follows esteemed philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts) who is up for tenure. After she and her husband Frederick (Michael Stuhlbarg) host a dinner party, her PhD student Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) accuses Alma’s colleague and close friend Hank (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault.
Examining an abuse of power through an academic lens, the script from debut screenwriter Nora Garrett benefits from the production actually taking place within the confines of the Ivy League institution. Closed in by high-ceilinged corridors and mahogany bookcases, the old-fashioned richness of the aesthetic looms over the intellectual pawns in the director’s game of privilege, race, cancel culture, and generational divide. A scene where a song by The Smiths blares out in the student bar leads to some clumsy commentary on ‘separating the art from the artist’ and this, along with Woody Allen typeface in the opening titles, demonstrates that the narrative might be too thematically crammed; the film feels too late to the party in the many societal questions it half-heartedly ponders.
Playing against type, Julia Roberts is great in the leading role. Stern and icy, she captures the gravitas of her character with aplomb and pairs very well with Edebiri in a compelling mentor-mentee dynamic. Maggie mimics Alma’s mannerisms and power-blazer fashion sense in a display of admiration, neatly feeding into the complexity of their relationship. Also going against type is Garfield who is monstrously good as the pompous and despicable Hank – a picture of mansplaining, manspreading arrogance. A lengthy sequence whereby he meticulously orders then devours an Indian meal whilst casually pleading his innocence is one of the film’s best.
It could be argued that this story is less focused than his recent works, but a mid-tier effort from Luca Guadagnino is still more compelling than many at their best. Garrett’s ambitious script ponders the optics of so many hot topics that its actual delivery is somewhat lukewarm but After the Hunt is an intriguing morality tale nonetheless, worth watching for its collective of compelling central performances.
Cinema Perspective 