Though it wasn’t actually filmed there (the whole movie being shot on London soundstages), I can’t imagine the brass of Yale University enjoying the way their establishment is presented in Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt. It’s a cold, dark, and miserable place full of cold, dark, and miserable people doing cold, dark, and miserable things. It’s a bleak, sterile setting that, sadly, forms the backdrop for the least engaging film of Guadagnino’s career to date. It’s not a complete miss by any means but, up against his previous work (especially the insane double whammy of Challengers and Queer last year), it falls far short.
After the Hunt’s primary achievement is in giving Julia Roberts her best role in nearly 20 years. As Alma, a tenure-chasing philosophy professor at Yale whose career is suddenly interrupted by sexual assault allegations made against her closest colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) by PhD student Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), Roberts is icy and imperious, letting years of moral compromise and frustration curdle beneath the surface. It’s a great performance, boldly unsympathetic without becoming two-dimensional or unfeeling, well-supported by a mercurial turn from Edebiri and Garfield on fantastically odious form, though Michael Stuhlbarg steals the whole show as Alma’s psychoanalyst husband Frederik. Frederik is a man who has let a lifetime of playing second fiddle to his wife calcify into a soul-deep resentment, expressed through, basically, being a weird dickhead at all times. It’s an aggressive yet hilarious turn – I’m not sure I’ve seen a performance quite like it.
These performances capture the best of the script from first-time screenwriter Nora Garrett, which is packed with great little character moments. Best of the bunch might be, the day after being accused, Hank’s attempt to protest his innocence to Alma at an Indian restaurant, talking about ‘the cliché of the cultural moment’ through mouthfuls of naan bread, which is just magically loathsome stuff. There’s also an admirable bravery in not making Maggie easy to like – there’s no doubt she’s been badly wronged, but she’s also a rich, privileged, and mediocre student who seems to get some joy out of weaponizing her pain.
When After the Hunt leaves its character focus for its more state-of-the-nation stuff, though, it stumbles. There’s a lot of talk of how in-vogue it is to be a victim; dismissive discussions of sexual misconduct and intersectional identity politics constantly being had by the middle-aged characters. That’s always a dicey place to go, but After the Hunt’s commentary is not let down by its political leanings but by the fact that all of these chats feel like watered-down and substantially less clever spins on the exact topics covered so brilliantly by Todd Field’s Tar, to which Guadagnino’s film bears a striking – and always very unflattering – resemblance.
Guadagnino’s maximalist style does keep things visually interesting, with predatory and invasive camerawork from DP Malik Hassan Sayeed that also has the habit of shrouding these morally murky characters in shadow. Sometimes the style does over-literalise the themes though; I get that this is a film about things that can’t or shouldn’t be said in modern society, but to express (as After the Hunt does) this notion by frequently subsuming the actual dialogue track beneath the heavy soundscape of music and ticking clocks feels both on-the-nose and just kind of irritating.
The music is, admittedly, pretty great though, another in a long line of excellent scores from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, a score that pretty single-handedly saves the last act from falling entirely flat. After the Hunt ends very oddly, basically just fizzling into nothing in a badly overextended climax. There’s enough good stuff here to keep After the Hunt afloat, but this is a very minor entry into the Guadagnino canon, forgivable thanks to how unbelievably *major* his 2024 was.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 