Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny
Screenplay: Nora Garrett
139 mins. Rated R for language and some sexual content.

Luca Guadagnino (Challengers) is one of the most exciting directors working today, creating thought-provoking stories and layered characters and always pushing the boundaries. His new film, After the Hunt, is no less ambitious, a movie designed to discomfort and challenge viewers, proclaiming that not every discussion needs to be easy, but they are worth having all the same. It pains me to say that I was ultimately disappointed in the movie, which says we need to have the conversation while never really diving deep enough into that conversation.

Alma (Julia Roberts, Notting Hill) is a respected Yale professor approaching tenure. When her colleague, Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield, The Social Network), is accused of sexually assaulting Alma’s student. Now, Alma doesn’t know who to believe and she can’t figure out the proper way to approach the dilemma, which seeks to unravel her for the crime of indecision.

Guadagnino’s film is an admirable dissection of the politics of victims and accusers and knowing how to maneuver through these situations and, in Alma’s case, how to fail at it. In some ways, setting the film at Yale and including some unlikable characters in the forefront gives enough distance to view the events through a lens and see what Guadagnino is going for. These are some Whit Stillman-levels of academic elite. The film’s tag accurately informs the audience, as spoken by Alma, “Not everything is supposed to make you comfortable.” I do believe that uncomfortable conversations need to happen for a society to progress in any worthwhile way, and that’s the idea of After the Hunt, but the execution is slapdash, boasting about the need for a discussion but never having one that leads anywhere. As stated in the film, “we are governed by the rules of our society,” but I don’t think the examination of these societal rules ever really has meaning.

Alma is unlikable by design, but we never really get into her head, and a climactic revelation on her part doesn’t give her character arc enough closure. Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse), who plays Alma’s student and Hank’s accuser, have the most interesting characters because we never really get to know any certainty about the situation, and in that aspect, the film is successful at creating those lingering questions that we never have fully answered. Outside of that, most of these characters are neither likable nor interesting enough to carry this lengthy, overstuffed and sluggish narrative.

I was ultimately disappointed by After the Hunt. While I think the movie is trying to say something of value, I don’t know that it ever really translated in a satisfactory way, in part due to an unfocused and meandering screenplay that never feels like its moving anywhere. There are some strong technical elements, and the cast does great work, but this is a rare film from this exciting director that I can’t in good conscience recommend.

2.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

• For my review of Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name, click here.
• For my review of Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, click here.