After the Hunt

Grade: C+

After the Hunt is frustratingly vague to the point where I wondered if the screenwriter even knew what was really going on. Director Luca Guadagnino (Queer, Challengers, Bones and All, Call Me By Your Name) specializes in bringing us stories tinged with palpable sexual tension – whether it be among cannibals or on the tennis court. I was looking forward to his take on a thriller involving a “me too” type allegation, headed up by a cast including Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield, no less.

It begins with what appears to be a heavy Woody Allen homage. The opening credits are Allen’s usual white letters on a black background, while an old ballad plays. It’s even got the Allen font. “This happened at Yale,” we are told. Julia Roberts is Alma, a Yale professor. She is up for tenure, as is a friend/fellow teacher at the school named Hank (Andrew Garfield). They are hoping to soon find out which one of them gets it. The first wrench thrown into the plot is when a student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), makes allegations that Hank…did something…to her after walking her home after a party they all attended at Alma’s apartment. She never says what actually happened other than “he crossed a line.” We hear concepts of an idea of something resembling Hank’s side of the story, when he talks to Alma in confidence at a diner. Admittedly, it’s a great scene. Hank has suspected that a recent paper written by Maggie broke some plagiarism rules. He confronted her about it that night, and that’s what we hear. This leaves us to wonder if Maggie is thinking she can smear or cancel Hank to cover her tracks, or did whatever she’s hinting at really happen.

The film fails to answer so many nuts-and-bots questions about the plot, in favor of eternally circular, pretentious dialogue. I’d already had just about enough of almost everyone in that opening party scene. The most likable character in the movie, and the only one we see who is always honest, is Alma’s husband Frederik, played by Michael Stuhlbarg. He has my favorite speaking voice in the business, with a delivery that will lull you with his comforting tones and impeccable diction. His work as the father in Call Me By Your Name is one of my favorite performances not nominated for an Oscar. I can pretty much guarantee you that you’ve seen him in something – and he has been in several that I don’t remember him in. I see that as a testament to how prolific and chameleonic he can be. He has a great line early on, when he tells Roberts that they are “too old and too married to keep things from one another.”

Roberts and Garfield emote, pontificate, and otherwise act up a storm. This must have been an actor’s dream. Lots of yelling, smoking, and crying. The stuff Oscar clips are made of. 30-year-old Edebiri as Maggie is a powerhouse actress. I’ve enjoyed seeing her (in Bottoms and Theater Camp) as well as hearing her (as the voices of Envy in Inside Out 2, April O’Neil in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, and Glory in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse). Ultimately and disappointingly, After the Hunt is a shallow smokescreen of simulated conflict without real exploration.

The movie is already notorious, among critic reviews, for leaving so much to remain ambiguous and unexplained. I was preparing myself to accept that we’d never get an explanation for an envelope that was discovered in a bathroom cabinet in an early scene (it was shaping up to be a shallow, undisclosed MacGuffin), but I do appreciate that we were finally filled in on that. Otherwise, After the Hunt never lands the plane when it comes to so many of the major questions raised. This isn’t something like David Lynch, where it’s almost expected that it will be left open to interpretation. Sooner or later, a film like After the Hunt needs to stop and give it to us straight, and it never does. Guadagnino is too talented and too nominated to pussyfoot around with us like this.

Grade: C+