Top talent wasted in uninspired Ivy League drama
Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name earned the coveted #1 spot on my Top 10 List back in 2017, but none of his films since then have come close to that level of excellence. While last year’s Challengers was at least decently entertaining, Guadagnino’s newest, After the Hunt, is another disappointment.
Guadagnino’s first miscalculation was working from a script from a first-time screenwriter. The screenplay has the feel of something written years ago in a screenwriting workshop that its author, the actress Nora Garrett, might have been told “has potential.” Centering on a sexual impropriety accusation brought against a professor at Yale University, the film already feels dated in terms of its #MeToo ethos, and doesn’t have anything new or unique to say on the subject. Tár and She Said, both from 2022, and this year’s Sorry, Baby handled the topic with much more depth, authenticity, and empathy. In contrast, After the Hunt wants to be provocative, but because it withholds details about the alleged unwanted advances, and, more importantly, leaves open the question of guilt or innocence, instead feels frustrating and incomplete.
The story focuses on Maggie (The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri), a graduate student who brings sexual misconduct charges against a beloved Yale philosophy professor, Hank (Andrew Garfield). Thrown into the mix, and not without reservations, is fellow professor Alma (Julia Roberts), whose loyalties vacillate between Maggie and Hank for reasons that become clear by the film’s end.
Setting aside whether or not we agree with some of Alma’s actions or if we believe Hank or Maggie, one thing we learn is that higher education is a cesspool of favoritism, back stabbing, anger, and pretension. Guadagnino may not have intended to make a warning against the liberal arts tenure track career path, but that emerges as his film’s biggest take away.
Part of the film’s problem is the casting. Both Garfield and Roberts seem miscast, dialing back their usual charm and exuberance to play dour, stressed out, unlikable characters. Michael Stuhlbarg, as Alma’s husband Frederik, evokes the passive father he played in Call Me By Your Name, and Chloe Sevigny is wasted as Alma’s friend and university psychiatrist Kim. Edebiri fares the best, but her role feels underwritten and not entirely believable in terms of the inappropriate way she interacts with Alma, her professor and mentor.
The picture seems to want to say something edgy and insightful about class, race, misogyny, power, justice, and vengeance, but instead falls far short of saying anything at all noteworthy or fresh. Whatever thought-provoking message Guadagnino and Garrett intended to convey becomes lost in the film’s tired story and uninspired performances.
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After the Hunt is now playing in theaters, including at the AMC Metreon, the AMC Kabuki, and the Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco, and the Grand Lake in Oakland.
