Put on your thinking cap and put away all potential distractions because Luca Guadagnino is going to require your undivided attention as he explores murky moral and ethical territory with an intellectual lens and dialogue-heavy script in After The Hunt.
Yale University philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts) can appear stuffy and icy, but the intelligent career woman is popular among her students and colleagues – she even hosts them for parties at her apartment she shares with her psychiatrist husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg).
After one such occasion, which involved deep conversations over many bottles of wine, Alma spies her colleague and very close friend Hank (Andrew Garfield) leave with her bright and promising student Margaret Resnick (Ayo Edebiri).
The next day, Margaret tells Alma that Hank escorted her home then sexually assaulted her. Hank emphatically denies it.
Alma immediately finds herself between a rock and hard place, uncertain who to believe – the female student who admires her (or is it an infatuation?) or her best friend with whom the bond runs deep.
The situation threatens to dredge up a long-buried secret from Alma’s past which begins to affect her health and sets her on a course that could jeopardise the tenure she is about to be awarded.
At first, After The Hunt appears to be a belated exploration of consent, believing women and cancel culture in the Me Too era, coming in five years after Promising Young Woman became one of the higher profile examples.
And while there is much to be mined from the cultural and societal shift that the movement brought, the plot device of the assault is used here as a starting point to fold in additional themes and relationship dynamics.
What sets After The Hunt aside is the way Nora Garrett’s script layers in generational conflicts –Gen X versus Gen Z. Is the younger generation too sensitive? And is the older generation too hardened and lacking empathy?
It is some fascinating territory to explore, particularly through the lens of the privileged and academically gifted, but the way it leans towards Alma’s point of view results in a lack of balance in its storytelling.
Despite its drawcard Hollywood cast, After The Hunt is made for the arthouse audience, as intellectuals sit around having philosophical debates sipping expensive wine. Not exactly competition for the next Marvel or DC film.
Garrett’s script is dense with philosophical dialogue that demands your attention – and with a running time of two hours and 20 minutes, there is much to get through, so this is best seen in a cinema with minimal distractions.
While the material is not the strongest that Guadagnino has handled, his visual language remains impeccable – the way he and his cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed have framed the actors and shifted focus within shots is mesmerising.
And when the actors – who are all excellent and magnetic throughout, particularly Roberts – look down the barrel of the camera, the intensity of each conversation is elevated.
If you can weather a group of attractive and talented performers wax lyrical, this is one of the better “people sitting around talking” movies you are likely to catch.
7 out of 10
