After The Hunt

By Joanna Langfield

Julia Roberts’s psychodrama is overcooked, but the meaty insights it serves up still make this a bountiful watch.

An icy, commanding Roberts stars as a philosophy professor at Yale, on the verge of tenure. She and husband Michael Stuhlbarg, a practicing psychologist, live in a beautiful apartment, where they host cozy dinner parties for colleagues and favored students. It is after one of these affairs that another professor, Henrik, is accused by student Maggie, of something inappropriate. Maggie can’t even tell Roberts’s Alma exactly what happened. And Alma finds herself at a most dicey crossroad. Should she believe the woman, as the mores of the time insist? Or should she find compassion for the man, who swears he did nothing wrong?

There is so much more plot in Nora Garrett’s ambitious screenplay. You’ll either buy into it or find the soapy subplots off-putting. But, sneaking their way into many of the perpetually whirling scenes are some bold truths not often said in real life, let alone in the movies. Is an older, white woman never truly going to be able to understand, or to properly mentor, a young woman of color? And is it really the wrong advice when Maggie is told to keep her mouth shut, not to report the assault, with an eye toward protecting her professional future? Moments like these are stunningly provocative, doing the work that director Luca
Guadagnino’s flashy direction and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s pounding soundtrack shoot for.

Roberts is terrific, calibrating the anger, confusion and yearning for control that is tossed aside in many women of a certain age. Ayo Edebiri and Chloe Sevigny shine, but it is the lithe Andrew Garfield who surprises. There’s no surprise how perfect Michael Stuhlberg is. If only Guadagnino had gotten out of his stellar ensemble’s way, maybe the pungent lessons tucked into this movie would get the attention they truly deserve.