Shadows on the Wall | After the Hunt

After the Hunt

dir Luca Guadagnino
scr Nora Garrett
prd Brian Grazer, Luca Guadagnino, Jeb Brody, Allan Mandelbaum
with Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloe Sevigny, Lio Mehiel, David Leiber, Thaddea Graham, Will Price, Christine Dye, Lailani Olan, Nora Garrett
release US 10.Oct.25,
UK 17.Oct.25
25/UK Sony 2h19

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Abrasive and difficult, this university-set drama confronts the audience with complex moral situations and very messy characters who continually fail in the way they react to each other. No one here is even remotely likeable, although we do have sympathy for each of them at various points. Luca Guadagnino directs the film with plenty of audacious style, continually delving beneath the surfaces. And the actors go for broke.

At Yale, philosophy professor Alma (Roberts) and her colleague and close friend Hank (Garfield) are both vying for tenure, debating the ideological issues of merit and privilege. Then PhD student Maggie (Edebiri) tells Alma that, after a drunken dinner party, Hank assaulted her. Alma has a couple of reasons to pause for thought, so she confronts Hank about this, and he tells her a very different story. Meanwhile, Alma is concealing her debilitating pain from her husband Frederik (Stuhlbarg), whose loud music is driving her around the bend. So she's drinking rather far too much.

Featuring lots of academic conversations, the film feels dense and somewhat airless, even when the mischievous Frederik is deliberately annoying Alma, lost in his own high-volume world. Yes, these people are full-on confrontational, each in their own way, and it's frustrating to try to work out what's really going on beneath their posturing and bluster. We quickly tire of the smarty-pants banter and selfish control-freak tendencies. Even amid their camaraderie, none of them seem to like each other.

At the centre, Roberts delivers a powerfully dramatic performance as a woman who is caught in a spiral of her own making, scrounging for drugs, drinks and cigarettes as she strains to avoid taking sides between friends. Edebiri and Garfield find all kinds of conflicting emotions as Maggie and Hank push Alma for support, but both also appear to be flailing against something we can't see, overcompensating for their hidden insecurities. By contrast, Stuhlbarg is a swirl of distraction and compassion.

There's a rippling hint of mystery as Maggie discovers a secret from Alma's past, something that has relevance to the issue at hand, as does another disclosure that's casually dropped later on. But none of these ideas adequately create a full picture of these characters or their complicated inter-relationships. Instead, the story jumps to a coda that wraps everything up in a way that's insightful but simplistic. It's a well-made film that pushes us and makes us think, but it never quite lets us in.

themes, language, violence 11.Oct.25 lff

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