Chris Knipp
10-23-2025, 06:28 PM
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20hnt.jpg
JULIA ROBERTS, ANDREW GARFIELD IN AFTER THE HUNT
LUCA GUADAGNINO: AFTER THE HUNT (2025)
TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8R6DMlDtxk)
#MeToo cancel culture at Yale University is the subject for a bad movie you may love to hate - and debate
Luca Guadagnino has had a remarkable and interesting career that has grown and grown from relatively obscure beginnings, perhaps helped by a frequent early collaboration with the great Tilda Swinton, to a persistently relevant European-American filmmaker. Coming after I Am Love, A Bigger Splash, Call Me By Your Name (the turning point), Suspiria, Bones and All, Challengers and Queer (quite a run, and quite some fun), After the Hunt isn't going to dash his reputation, despite the fact that it is an attention-getting mess that may arouse plenty of discussion but isn't going to wind up with any accolades. He will be fine,if he just does something that works better next time.
The virtue of arriving at a movie a bit late as I am now is, when it's controversial or deliberately provocative like this one, nearly everything has come out. Mike D'Angelo has come to it late too, giving it a 40/100 (he grades low but not that low), and has sent out a particularly astute and succinct review, which I will mine shamelessly here. His rundown gets to the heart of things immediately, viz., that the sole purpose of the Woody Allen-style opening credits is to allude ("cheekily") to the latter's "cancellation." Surprising so many reviewers have noted the Woody Allen-style credits without seeing what they mean.
It's more interesting to have an ambiguous #MeToo film plot where all the main characters are unlikeable, Mike notes, "(including the queer accuser of color who's romantically involved with a non-binary trans person!)"* - preferable, say, to a straightforward one like Kelly Green's 2019 The Assistant (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4765-THE-ASSISTANT-(Kitty-Green-2019)&highlight=ASSISTANT+%28Kelly+Green+2019%29) where who's virtuous or bad is obvious from the start.
Indeed, After the Hunt is much more exciting and interesting, and regardless of its considerable faults, is just a great subject for discussion and debate. But there are those faults. Guadagnino sailed into treacherous waters by hiring a writer as inexperienced as first-timer Nora Garrett, who has delivered for After the Hunt, as Mike puts it, "some of the clunkiest plotting in recent memory." A particularly glaring example is having the lead character, Alma (Julia Roberts) hide secrets of her past taped under a cabinet drawer in the bathroom that her husband Frederick (Michael Stuhlbarg) has never found but her accuser Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) immediately comes upon looking for toilet paper (and snooping).
Numerous reviewers have found the film's tone uneven and its length excessive. Others have noted oddities in the visuals, the sudden peculiar too-close closeups of actors' faces, as well as the loudly ticking clock sound used sparingly but meaninglessly. The faux mise-en-scène is flat: the British mockup of Yale University and New Haven lacks the flavor of New England academe, of a specific place. Some have objected that the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (a fourth collaboration with Luca) drowns out dialogue. That didn't seem quite as bad as I'd expected, but I wish I could have made out the words of Chloë Sevigny as the Yale philosophy department's resident psychotherapist Dr. Kim Sayers. Chloë, a "friend" from the great Guadagnino HBO series "We Are Who We Are," always adds something stylish (or here, studiously un-stylish) to a role, and it was a pity to miss her and Julia Roberts' exchange about whether a jukebox song is by Morrissey or Morrissey's band. Or whatever. It's another #MeToo joke and the delivery might have given it more of an ironic twist.
The actors are fine - or are they? Many reviewers have good things to say about Michael Stuhlbarg (so much praised for his one speech late in Call Me by Your Name), seen here as Julia Roberts' husband Frederick. D'Angelo puts it this way: "Loved every moment of Michael Stuhlbarg passive-aggressively protesting his voluntary emasculation, but that was the only thing in After the Hunt that felt even remotely persuasive or insightful to me." One scene may be the peak of the passive-aggressive protesting, where Frederick noisily rushes back and forth from dining room to kitchen, which may be hilarious, but also is jarringly distracting for a minor character.
The major ones are Hank (Andrew Garfield), a brash up-and-coming assistant professor of philosophy who's very flirty, and maybe more, with Alma (Julia Roberts) a professor in the same department, both up for tenure (and only one can get it!), and Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) a graduate student, Alma's young allegedly brilliant ostensible protege and "friend" (and admirer) whom Hank follows after the opening scene's party at Alma and Frederick's to her off-campus residence, where she alleges to Alma, he sexually assaults him in a way she won't specify, saying only that he went "over the line." Hank is the most overdrawn character, a young macho asshole, always posturing and posing with wide open shirts and tight jeans and a hateable beard that seems unreal. This jarring performance is the more so because Garfield always plays loveable characters. His performance is one big misstep, though it's debatable whether that misstep is his. Maggie (Edebiri) is unlikeable, arguably too much so, but there is subtlety in her delivery. As for Julia, who is mysteriously, painfully ill with what later are revealed to be stomach ulcers, there is a faux hint of Cate Blanchett's TÁR performance in her character that glaringly stands out in her "anti-PC rant" that "has been overwritten," D'Angelo says, "to the point that it's closer kin to America Ferrara's speech toward the end of Barbie." The biggest problem with Alma is that (as Mike says) while Reynolds' refusal to "telegraph" her character's "mindset" is admirable, she overdoes it to the point where her various betrayals "don't properly register," particularly when she tells the Yale dean that she believes Maggie.
It is exceedingly problematic that Maggie is not only threatening a serious accusation that nobody quite seems to believe and Hank vehemently denies, but is a character laden with so many identifiers, a forest of check-boxes: queer, person of color, alleged plagiarist, child of billionaire Yale donors, roommate of a non-binary trans person, nose-ring wearer - she is more a construct than a person. In the (for a while yet) DEI-dominated academic world, Maggie can't lose. In the terms the film internally sets, she can't possibly win.
If only Stuhlbarg convinces and delights, still everything else holds your attention "by way of sheer provocation," D'Angelo says, and "that's not nothing." No, that may be quite a lot. This bad movie may wind up being a subject of discussion longer than this year's really good ones.
____________
*Alex (Lío Mehiel, of Mutt).
After the Hunt, 138 mins., premiered at Venice Aug. 29, 2025, showing also at the NYFF as the Opening Night Film,and at Zurich, Rio, Beyond Fest (Los Angeles), Vancouver, BFI London, Warsaw, Milwaukee, San Diego, Riga and Vienna. US limited theatrical opening from Oct. 10, 2025. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/after-the-hunt/) rating: 52%.
JULIA ROBERTS, ANDREW GARFIELD IN AFTER THE HUNT
LUCA GUADAGNINO: AFTER THE HUNT (2025)
TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8R6DMlDtxk)
#MeToo cancel culture at Yale University is the subject for a bad movie you may love to hate - and debate
Luca Guadagnino has had a remarkable and interesting career that has grown and grown from relatively obscure beginnings, perhaps helped by a frequent early collaboration with the great Tilda Swinton, to a persistently relevant European-American filmmaker. Coming after I Am Love, A Bigger Splash, Call Me By Your Name (the turning point), Suspiria, Bones and All, Challengers and Queer (quite a run, and quite some fun), After the Hunt isn't going to dash his reputation, despite the fact that it is an attention-getting mess that may arouse plenty of discussion but isn't going to wind up with any accolades. He will be fine,if he just does something that works better next time.
The virtue of arriving at a movie a bit late as I am now is, when it's controversial or deliberately provocative like this one, nearly everything has come out. Mike D'Angelo has come to it late too, giving it a 40/100 (he grades low but not that low), and has sent out a particularly astute and succinct review, which I will mine shamelessly here. His rundown gets to the heart of things immediately, viz., that the sole purpose of the Woody Allen-style opening credits is to allude ("cheekily") to the latter's "cancellation." Surprising so many reviewers have noted the Woody Allen-style credits without seeing what they mean.
It's more interesting to have an ambiguous #MeToo film plot where all the main characters are unlikeable, Mike notes, "(including the queer accuser of color who's romantically involved with a non-binary trans person!)"* - preferable, say, to a straightforward one like Kelly Green's 2019 The Assistant (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4765-THE-ASSISTANT-(Kitty-Green-2019)&highlight=ASSISTANT+%28Kelly+Green+2019%29) where who's virtuous or bad is obvious from the start.
Indeed, After the Hunt is much more exciting and interesting, and regardless of its considerable faults, is just a great subject for discussion and debate. But there are those faults. Guadagnino sailed into treacherous waters by hiring a writer as inexperienced as first-timer Nora Garrett, who has delivered for After the Hunt, as Mike puts it, "some of the clunkiest plotting in recent memory." A particularly glaring example is having the lead character, Alma (Julia Roberts) hide secrets of her past taped under a cabinet drawer in the bathroom that her husband Frederick (Michael Stuhlbarg) has never found but her accuser Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) immediately comes upon looking for toilet paper (and snooping).
Numerous reviewers have found the film's tone uneven and its length excessive. Others have noted oddities in the visuals, the sudden peculiar too-close closeups of actors' faces, as well as the loudly ticking clock sound used sparingly but meaninglessly. The faux mise-en-scène is flat: the British mockup of Yale University and New Haven lacks the flavor of New England academe, of a specific place. Some have objected that the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (a fourth collaboration with Luca) drowns out dialogue. That didn't seem quite as bad as I'd expected, but I wish I could have made out the words of Chloë Sevigny as the Yale philosophy department's resident psychotherapist Dr. Kim Sayers. Chloë, a "friend" from the great Guadagnino HBO series "We Are Who We Are," always adds something stylish (or here, studiously un-stylish) to a role, and it was a pity to miss her and Julia Roberts' exchange about whether a jukebox song is by Morrissey or Morrissey's band. Or whatever. It's another #MeToo joke and the delivery might have given it more of an ironic twist.
The actors are fine - or are they? Many reviewers have good things to say about Michael Stuhlbarg (so much praised for his one speech late in Call Me by Your Name), seen here as Julia Roberts' husband Frederick. D'Angelo puts it this way: "Loved every moment of Michael Stuhlbarg passive-aggressively protesting his voluntary emasculation, but that was the only thing in After the Hunt that felt even remotely persuasive or insightful to me." One scene may be the peak of the passive-aggressive protesting, where Frederick noisily rushes back and forth from dining room to kitchen, which may be hilarious, but also is jarringly distracting for a minor character.
The major ones are Hank (Andrew Garfield), a brash up-and-coming assistant professor of philosophy who's very flirty, and maybe more, with Alma (Julia Roberts) a professor in the same department, both up for tenure (and only one can get it!), and Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) a graduate student, Alma's young allegedly brilliant ostensible protege and "friend" (and admirer) whom Hank follows after the opening scene's party at Alma and Frederick's to her off-campus residence, where she alleges to Alma, he sexually assaults him in a way she won't specify, saying only that he went "over the line." Hank is the most overdrawn character, a young macho asshole, always posturing and posing with wide open shirts and tight jeans and a hateable beard that seems unreal. This jarring performance is the more so because Garfield always plays loveable characters. His performance is one big misstep, though it's debatable whether that misstep is his. Maggie (Edebiri) is unlikeable, arguably too much so, but there is subtlety in her delivery. As for Julia, who is mysteriously, painfully ill with what later are revealed to be stomach ulcers, there is a faux hint of Cate Blanchett's TÁR performance in her character that glaringly stands out in her "anti-PC rant" that "has been overwritten," D'Angelo says, "to the point that it's closer kin to America Ferrara's speech toward the end of Barbie." The biggest problem with Alma is that (as Mike says) while Reynolds' refusal to "telegraph" her character's "mindset" is admirable, she overdoes it to the point where her various betrayals "don't properly register," particularly when she tells the Yale dean that she believes Maggie.
It is exceedingly problematic that Maggie is not only threatening a serious accusation that nobody quite seems to believe and Hank vehemently denies, but is a character laden with so many identifiers, a forest of check-boxes: queer, person of color, alleged plagiarist, child of billionaire Yale donors, roommate of a non-binary trans person, nose-ring wearer - she is more a construct than a person. In the (for a while yet) DEI-dominated academic world, Maggie can't lose. In the terms the film internally sets, she can't possibly win.
If only Stuhlbarg convinces and delights, still everything else holds your attention "by way of sheer provocation," D'Angelo says, and "that's not nothing." No, that may be quite a lot. This bad movie may wind up being a subject of discussion longer than this year's really good ones.
____________
*Alex (Lío Mehiel, of Mutt).
After the Hunt, 138 mins., premiered at Venice Aug. 29, 2025, showing also at the NYFF as the Opening Night Film,and at Zurich, Rio, Beyond Fest (Los Angeles), Vancouver, BFI London, Warsaw, Milwaukee, San Diego, Riga and Vienna. US limited theatrical opening from Oct. 10, 2025. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/after-the-hunt/) rating: 52%.