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By Keith Walther | Rose Law Group Reporter
What do you get with a bunch of unlikable, ivy league characters hellbent on ruining each other’s lives? The answer is a boring, drawn out, dialogue infested charade that tries to dress itself up as an intellectual think piece. “After the Hunt” is a psychological drama that uses big words to convey its vast intelligence, only to reveal a soft underbelly of superficial, underdeveloped themes.
Alma (Julia Roberts) and Hank (Andrew Garfield) are a couple of Yale professors and best friends, both attempting to obtain highly coveted tenure. Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) is Alma’s star pupil working on her dissertation. After a drunken dinner party, a sexual abuse allegation is leveled against Hank, threatening his livelihood and putting Alma in a precarious situation of having to pick a side without knowing who is telling the truth, potentially losing her dear friend or putting her career in jeopardy.
Once again, director Luca Guadagnino chooses style over substance like he’s done time and time again, most recently with last year’s “Challengers” and “Queer.” “After the Hunt” is very provocative like all his prior films, but it is a bit different in that he avoids overt sexuality, opting for a more subtle sexual undertone. In fact, Luca purposely excludes any sex scenes, especially with regards to the alleged rape, instead leaving it up to the audience to decide the guilt. This enables viewers to examine the evidence they are presented with, along with the motives of each character, which helps to facilitate an interesting debate. This will also annoy many people who prefer to be told specifically what occurred, rather than leaving it to mystery.
One of the biggest issues that has been an ongoing weakness for this director is developing appealing characters. Every single character in this film is well-developed but excruciatingly unlikable, preventing viewers from caring about what happens to any of them. This lack of emotional attachment undermines the plot of the movie as well as the pacing. In addition, scenes are prolonged with superfluous dialogue, lingering with unintentionality that further compromises the pacing. Luca opens the door to explore more themes, only to hastily resolve or abandon them altogether, making it pointless for their inclusion in the first place and miring the main storyline in mud. He also makes an odd choice to use the sound of a loud ticking clock that moves all other sounds to the background in multiple scenes, including the opening, that becomes exceedingly annoying and makes viewers more aware of how slowly the movie flows.
Despite the overly flawed and despicable characters, the committed acting performances by the entire cast prevent this film from being a complete waste of time. Led by a legend, Julia Roberts is a compelling watch as a prestigious university professor with a penchant for pain medication to deal with her debilitating ulcers. She beautifully presents a stoic façade that belies her character’s dark past and a fading marriage. As the stress of the plot takes its toll on her character, she smoothly illustrates the cracks mentally and physically.
As an Emmy winner for her work on TV’s “The Bear,” Ayo Edebiri holds her own with the Oscar winner, delivering her lines with conviction. She instills reverence in her character for Julia’s that borders on an unhealthy obsession that also feeds Julia’s ego. As Ayo recounts her character’s allegation of sexual abuse, she does so in a way that prohibits the audience from being sure if it really happened or not. At times, her strong emotional response conveys a convincing affirmative, while at other times, she inserts one too many details that serve as odd inclusions to suggest dishonesty.
Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Chloë Sevigny round out the supporting cast nicely. Garfield imbues his character with a natural charisma and an easy-going flirtatiousness that promote a cloud of suspicion to hang over his implicated character. Stuhlbarg is the only somewhat likeable character in the film as the doting husband who is constantly neglected and rebuffed. Sevigny portrays the friendly yet gossiping professor who seems content to be used and abused by the main character.
Ultimately, this is an unappealing movie of a bunch of characters doling out emotional violence on each other, wielding words and body language like they were razor sharp machetes. “After the Hunt” wastes riveting performances from an accomplished cast due to a filmmaker’s inability to harness more substance over style. This is one hunting license that needs to be revoked.
This movie earns
