After the Hunt
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Written by Nora Garrett
Starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri
Classification 14A; 129 minutes
Opens in theatres Oct. 17
The discourse around cancel culture can be exhausting. We’ve listened to the defenses, litigated the offenses, weighed freedom of speech against the right to discriminate or offend, and questioned whether “woke mobs” run amok are even a real thing; or at least of real consequence.
Now we have After The Hunt, the latest from Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino, rehashing a lot of that same discourse. And it, too, can be exhausting.
After The Hunt is a drama set outside office hours at Yale, in which overly familiar debates around ethics and consequences are tossed around as if in an echo chamber, all the while losing their sense of urgency.
We listen to Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield put on airs as academics, reminding us that a misogynist like Freud or a racist like Nietzsche would probably be deplatformed (or turned into poster boys for the far right) today. Roberts’ Alma even dishes out deliciously barbed sentiments about an overly sensitive new generation, who she describes as padding their “chosen cell with niceties and trigger warnings.” The cutting line would be even more impressive if Nora Garrett’s screenplay didn’t keep searching for more ways to make the same observations, in lieu of deepening the conversation or having anything new to say.
Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield play Yale professors navigating familiar debates around ethics,, misconduct and getting cancelled.Yannis Drakoulidis/The Associated Press
Her material is largely elevated by Roberts, Garfield and Ayo Edebiri, a dynamite cast who sink their teeth into the script’s mild provocations, while also feeling safe from what makes their characters so cancellable, or at least irritable. If there are any actors today whose public personas come off as not only impeachable, but so genuine, upstanding and considered that they must be protected at all costs, it’s these three.
Roberts and Garfield play Alma and Hank, Yale professors testing their boundaries when it comes to socializing with students, and each other. Edebiri is Maggie, a prized PhD candidate navigating Alma and Hank, the casual intimacies and affections they fling between each other, and also in her direction. Maggie makes choices when it comes to what she reciprocates or finds tolerable, or where she draws the line. Michael Stuhlberg is also present, typically stealing every scene, as Alma’s perceptive and at times gloriously haughty husband.
The drama unfolds almost immediately, when Maggie alleges Hank sexually assaulted her. Alma has to weigh the credible allegation against her colleague, who exhibits an insatiable appetite around women, and Hank’s own accusation that Maggie is “exploiting this shallow cultural moment.” Both things could be true, but After The Hunt doesn’t yield much tension from the moral dilemma – where Alma risks being judged for how she responds or how meagre her response may seem – nor the nuances in between.
Maybe that’s why it keeps complicating things, with fraught back stories and whataboutisms written into a plot that twists in at times inexplicable ways just to make its points. The real-life versions of this story tend to be far simpler and more intriguing.
Call Me By Your Name and Challengers director Guadagnino, left, is working with Roberts on his new film After the Hunt.Yannis Drakoulidis/The Associated Press
After The Hunt, which is mostly set just before 2020, isn’t based on anyone in particular. But a likely inspiration is Yale power couple Jed Rubenfield and Amy Chua. Rubenfield’s alleged transgressions with female students (leading to a suspension in 2020) staining his wife Chua’s reputation for championing diverse law students. She also endorsed Brett Kavanaugh, and allegedly gave female students advice on how to appear attractive when looking to work for the judge, the questionable ethics on campus echoing into the superior court.
Guadagnino’s film feels small and overwrought in comparison; satisfied to drag things out within the bubble of faux academia (and cinephilia, with a pointed nod in Woody Allen’s direction). But it does have its pleasures, specifically where the actors speak less and make us feel so much more in performance and action.
Guadagnino is a sensual filmmaker. The sexiness of Call Me By Your Name and Challengers should make that obvious. He has a field day directing every hand grazing across a back or awkward kiss – and the way those things change the temperature in every moment. There’s a magnificent dance between Garfield and Roberts especially – the entitlement in his physical presence, as if he’s always imposing himself, and the delicate balance she strikes being both frosty and inviting.
As it turns out, observing them behave badly, and silently judging, is so much more fun than listening to them talk about bad behaviour.
Special to The Globe and Mail