Review: After the Hunt – Alma matters
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, Mark Stuhlbarg
6/10
Hot-button topics are certainly present in After the Hunt, but they’re not exactly put under the microscope. Instead, they’re examined in a very broad manner in this film that dilutes its strong performances and intriguing dialogue with the most baffling director decisions to be seen in a film this year.
Our philosophy professor main character has the very on-the-nose name Alma (Julia Roberts), whose relationships with those closest to her come under pressure when her PhD protégée Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) accuses a fellow teacher at the campus, Hank (Andrew Garfield), of sexual assault, a claim he denies and chalks up to a misunderstanding.
Some pretty zesty themes to be dealing with, and while After the Hunt makes some sort of exploration of them without being didactic, it also comes across as too general and even predictable (and even soap operatic) with the turns this tale takes. Films like 2019’s Luce and 2022’s Tár dealt with the sexual tensions of power dynamics in a far more intriguing and surprising way, so this film feels like a pale copy of them.
And the directing from the acclaimed Luca Guadagnino can be very distracting to see. Even before the opening credits (and their inappropriate and unflattering homage to a far better director), there are flat-out odd sound choices that are intriguing but don’t end up complimenting the film’s themes at all. And the placement of the music as well is dreadful, sounding so out of place, as if there’s been an incorrect track left in the sound mix.
The conversations between these intellectual characters are fairly interesting and revealing of their attitudes on their philosophy studies … But Guadagnino stages these simple scenes in such an awkwardly arch way, with a ridiculous amount of empty space or headroom, subverting the rule of thirds and creating such horrible compositions between shots, making the film feel more off-putting than it should.
And one final directorial stamp comes at the very, very last second, making it the cherry on top that proves how self-conscious Guadagnino is as a director, desperately trying to make his films more artsy than they are smooth, and has audiences scratching their heads as to the necessity of his unusual ways.
It’s unfortunate that some pretty worthy performances from Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, and an amusing one from Mark Stuhlbarg just can’t elevate this unconfident script, nor can they compensate for the bizarreness of the directing. After the Hunt is certainly no conversation starter in the way that Tár was, as it’s unable to comprehend the enormity of such fraught issues that arise in its story of accusations and the treatment of its victims.
DAVID MORGAN-BROWN