Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
There’s a scene in ‘After the Hunt’, where Julia Roberts’ character, a professor at Yale, asks the dean if he keeps the ‘fancy’ alcohol in his office just for show.
‘I hate that shit. But what looks good, looks good, and against all odds, I’ve found myself in the business of optics, rather than substance,’ the dean responds.
The dialogue feels ironically meta, since ‘After the Hunt’ feels more about the optics than its substance. It’s got a great cast, with Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, and Ayo Edebiri playing primary leads. The premise is somewhat intriguing too, but the execution is questionably muddled.
Armed with her signature million-dollar smile, Julia Roberts plays Alma, a professor caught in a dark moral dilemma when her favorite PhD student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), makes allegations of sexual abuse against Alma’s colleague and close friend, Hank (Andrew Garfield). Alma is the first person Maggie confides in, seeking her advice and support, but is surprised to find Alma coldly ambivalent. Meanwhile, Hank claims Maggie is falsely framing him as a preemptive move to stop him from exposing her plagiarized paper.
Set in the world of academia, ‘After the Hunt’ feels highly pretentious, especially in the opening scene, where Alma and her psychiatrist husband, Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg), are hosting a party that mostly comprises her students and colleagues. Hank criticizes Gen Z for being too “woke” (in not so many words), and for walking on eggshells all the time, overly sensitive about offending anyone. The film draws a stark generational divide between old and young throughout the runtime, although Maggie is largely the only one representing the student side.
‘After the Hunt’ largely centers on Alma’s internal conflict over whether to believe Maggie or trust Hank, after all, it’s one person’s word against another’s, with no concrete evidence to support either side. Luca Guadagnino expertly places the viewer in the same moral bind as Alma, even as certain scenes subtly nudge us toward a particular interpretation.
Ayo Edebiri’s Maggie is an entitled billionaire heiress, openly gay, while Andrew Garfield’s Hank is a flirtatious professor, entitled in different ways. Either one could be lying, although, the story does tilt in a way that makes you question the privileged Maggie more than Hank. Then comes a scene in the second-half of ‘After the Hunt’, that suddenly pushes you to consider – what if the young woman is speaking the truth after all? The story thus becomes less about the truth and more about loyalty, trust, and gut instincts.
Either way, the central conundrum is further complicated by Alma’s personal health struggle, which feels included largely to inject a sense of manufactured life-and-death stakes. It’s the kind of narrative shortcut where a serious illness is used to signal gravity, even though it sometimes comes across as lazy writing, like in this case, because it really doesn’t do anything for the plot, except give Julia Roberts’ character additional onscreen anguish. That said, a subplot involving Alma’s own dark past does tie in a little more neatly with her moral conflict over Maggie’s allegations.
While everybody’s performances in ‘After the Hunt’ is great, the choppy pace, the pretentious philosophical dialogues, and the fact that not one character is likable through the runtime, makes this a tedious watch. If Luca Guadagnino set out to mock the world of academia, their double-standards, and false airs, he does so successfully, but not very entertainingly.
The finale opts for ambiguity, asking audiences to piece together the truth for themselves. While each of the lead characters exits the story with neatly wrapped arcs, the viewer is left with a lingering sense of dissatisfaction. This is a film for those who appreciate open-ended storytelling and don’t mind slow pacing or verbose dialogues.
Rating: 5 on 10. Watch ‘After the Hunt’ on Prime Video.
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