It's not often that a film's opening credits font is itself provocative.
But in Luca Guadagnino The confusing but darkly engrossing “After the Hunt,” with its white Windsor Light Condensed lettering on a black background, alphabetical cast, and smooth jazz playing is immediately recognizable as the opening style of a Woody Allen film.
In the next juggle in After the Hunt, where Guadagnino will playfully spin a meandering tale of alleged sexual assault, cancel culture, academic privilege and Gen Z victimization, the credits are less an opening salvo than an opening wink.
As with many of Allen's films, “After the Hunt” is among a well-educated, self-sufficient class. The action takes place around Yale University. But unlike Allen's angsty, existential, chatty characters, Guadagnino's gathering of professors and students at cocktail parties is a more intriguing and unpleasant bunch.
These include philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts), on the cusp of tenure, her friend and department colleague Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield), and Imhoff's star student, Ph.D. a student named Maggie Resnick (Ayo Edebiri) who, after a party at Alma's house, accuses Hank of sexual assault.
Guadagnino's film, directed by Malik Hassan Said, is dark, flatly lit and brooding. Beneath these gray surfaces, After the Hunt's main characters—an ensemble of extraordinarily charming actors who squander much of their natural charisma here—fight each other over everything from Foucault to feminism, in a psychological battle set in a #MeToo minefield.
At least that's what “After the Hunt” promises. But Guadagnino's gritty, languid film, written by Nora Garrett, is only partially suited to the conversation piece it aims to be. Plot twists can be rushed or implausible, and the film increasingly feels like ideas and settings loosely connected to each other.
Yet I also enjoyed the poignancy of “After the Hunt.” Although it has a strong anti-woke streak, Guadagnino's film is more about how seemingly completely different generations have much more in common than they might seem. The cultural debates depicted in the film are often tinged with moralistic superiority, but that is not the case here. In “After the Hunt” everyone is kind of rotten.
This is especially unusual for Roberts, whose Alma is a much more complex character than she usually tackles. Alma is respected, extremely intelligent, ambitious and difficult to read. Her husband, a psychiatrist named Frederick (a fabulous Michael Stuhlbarg as a combustible cuckold and cook) idolizes her, but her affection is less obvious.
But lacking any natural enthusiasm, Roberts's reserve in the role feels more like weariness. It adds a bit of the offbeat tone to After the Hunt, but it's hard not to imagine someone like Cate Blanchett in the role.
“When did insulting someone become a mortal sin?” Hank asks at the film's opening party.
Signs of what Guadagnino might be up to came soon after Maggie reported the attack. Alma goes to meet a distraught Hank at a local restaurant. As they figure out what's fact and what's fiction in Maggie's story, it's hard not to notice the mirrors surrounding Hank.
The real mirror of After the Hunt is Alma and Maggie. Edebiri is something of a stand-in for Gen Z here, and her case expands to include a broader range of issues of inclusivity and more. As things spiral and Maggie's case leads to rising tensions on campus and in Alma's personal life, Alma goes from Maggie's mentor to something more like an enemy. But Alma's own past begins to play a role in the aftermath, adding a new frame to After the Hunt that puts Alma and Maggie's plight in a different light.
Is this a good time? Not particularly, although Garfield is great in his rage. Glib inserts don't help. In one scene, when Alma meets a fellow teacher (Chloë Sevigny) at a bar, a Smiths song is playing and she seems surprised that the Morrissey tune hasn't been outlawed.
I'm not sure there's much more to After the Hunt than that shrug scene. But After the Hunt deserves praise not so much for delving into these hot-button topics as for attempting to find its own way through them. This is not a #MeToo procedure, but rather a tragedy. When “optics, not substance” rules everything, as one character laments, no one lives happily ever after.
“After the Hunt,” an Amazon MGM release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language and some sexual content. Duration: 139 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
