Ayo Edebiri as Maggie Resnick and Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff in a scene from "After the Hunt." (Photo courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios)
The sound of a ticking clock punctuates several key moments in “After the Hunt,” a new drama from Luca Guadagnino that presents Ivy League academia as a minefield where treachery and infamy lie in shadowy corners like stealthy pumas, waiting for the right moment to pounce.
The Amazon MGM Studios release, boasting a pedigreed cast headlined by Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield, is the “Challengers” and “A Bigger Splash” auteur's most discomfiting work, a bitter pill of a morality play that sees its intellectually astute, emotionally stunted higher learning denizens navigating this territory like a chess board. All while frequently walking on eggshells.
Andrew Garfield as Hank Gibson and Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff in a scene from "After the Hunt." (Photo courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios)
Working from a screenplay by Nora Garrett, Guadagnino aims to tackle the blistering he said/she said dynamics that led to the rise of #MeToo, the movement that gave victims of sexual misconduct a voice to call out their abusers and help ensure they are held accountable for their transgressions.
“After the Hunt” bends its exploration of this thorny subject in the shape of a character study, a tale of a woman in a position of power slowly but inexorably reaching her breaking point. All the pieces are in place for a riveting pressure cooker: a judiciously selected cast, a crew that understood the assignment and a willingness to prioritize the characters' arc before anything resembling a message.
Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff, Michael Stuhlbarg as Frederik Imhoff and Chlow Sevigny as Dr. Kim Sayers in a scene from "After the Hunt." (Photo courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios)
So why does it feel like only a few of the pieces fit together? And I'm not just talking about Guadagnino's ill-advised decision to use the Windsor Light font that Woody Allen favored for his films' title cards, though that starts things off on the wrong foot.
Let's get back to that ticking clock. Alma Imhoff (Roberts) appears to be living her dream career. A well-respected philosophy professor at Yale, Alma shuffles between kitchen table banter with Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg), her psychiatrist husband, to class lectures where she encourages students to flex their critical thinking muscles and do the work, to finding a spot in a crowded New Haven bar for some after-hours gossiping with Dr. Kim Sayers (Chloë Sevigny), the university's student liaison. The only thing that appears to disrupt her well-managed itinerary are pangs of sharp pain in her abdomen area. But that clock you hear appears to be counting down to... something.
Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff in a scene from "After the Hunt." (Photo by Yannis Drakoulidis/courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios)
Every now and then, the Imhoffs host parties, the kind of faculty/student social function that anyone who's gone to college likely attended at some point. Guadagnino and Garrett use one of these shindigs to survey their territory and lay the groundwork for what follows. They prowl like leopards, these guests, alternating between idle banter and the kind of impenetrable debate that made this critic's eyes glaze over. But you don't need a college degree to know what's happening here. It may be outside of work hours, but these folks are working the room. Looking for an opening.
Alma may be the queen bee, but it's Hank Gibson (Garfield), Alma's philosophy department colleague, who's the center of attention. Hank is a new millennium kind of cool, young prof who's chummy with his students, displaying an intimate body language that's unimaginable when I went to college. His touchy-feely, familiar ways extend to Alma, making Frederik, who's unsuccessfully trying to mask his contempt for many of his guests, look at him funny.
The party peters out, until Hank is seen walking off with Maggie Resnick (Edebiri), Alma's protegée, into the night. Earlier at the party, Maggie seemed to be in over her head trying to keep up with everyone else, but Alma insists to a skeptical Frederik that she is a promising pupil. She just needs to find her footing. Cut to the next day, and Maggie, her hair damp and her doe-eyed gaze haunted, is waiting for Alma to get home to let her know that Hank “crossed the line” with her.
Michael Stuhlbarg as Frederik Imhoff and Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff in a scene from "After the Hunt." (Photo by Yannis Drakoulidis/courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios)
Alma, her face a morass of warring feelings, agrees to meet Hank at his favorite Indian restaurant, the kind of comfort-food joint you'll want to look up immediately after the movie's over, where he insists he did no such thing. Alma soon finds herself in the middle of a firestorm that will turn friends against each other and make the protagonist more and more isolated.
This should all work like gangbusters, but the confrontations in “After the Hunt” are way overwritten, the fireworks overthought to the point that they lose their sting. It doesn't help that Garrett hasn't found a way to make any of the characters sympathetic. I'm sensing Alma's detached, standoffish nature was what drew Roberts to the material in the first place, but as a viewer there's precious little to latch onto. Garfield does what he can with his limited screen time, his undercooked character flailing about in an attempt to stand out amid Alma's slow-motion unraveling.
Ayo Edebiri as Maggie Resnick in a scene from "After the Hunt." (Photo by Yannis Drakoulidis/courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios)
But the worse offender here is Maggie. It's not as if Edebiri is bad as the complicated Ivy Leaguer born with a silver spoon; it's just that Garrett never goes beyond the abstract in writing the character. Maggie is a construct, complete with a politically active nonbinary partner, but she never feels like she's made of flesh and blood. A climactic showdown between a distraught Alma and Maggie shows that, stripped of decorum, these kitties like to scratch, but although Guadagnino clearly means to draw blood, the results come across as awkward and underwhelming. Maggie often comes across as a 2020s spin on the title character in David Mamet's “Oleanna,” which also mined gender-based tensions, to the detriment of Edebiri's character.
Meanwhile, Stuhlbarg, so good as Elio's caring dad in Guadagnino's “Call Me by Your Name,” prances around fulfilling comic relief duties until an eleventh-hour scene gives his character a little more depth. The film's portrayal of his marriage to Alma, supportive despite deepening cracks, remains engrossing throughout. He does seem to be inhabiting a different, more enjoyable film than the dreary one where the rest of his co-stars are stuck.
“Hunt's” best character is actually not a person but a place. Alma has kept her old apartment in the Wharf, located in New Haven's outskirts, as an oasis to unwind, write and escape her current predicament. Like the more memorable settings in other Guadagnino films, the apartment's textures are enticing; it feels like a place we could have called home years ago. A late-in-the-game scene between Roberts and Garfield, set in Alma's flat, lands some of the blows that otherwise remain out of Guadagnino's reach.
But it's too little, too late. “After the Hunt” hits some intriguing “Dangerous Liaisons” notes as it progresses, but Garrett's screenplay is so stacked against Maggie that the way it unfolds is overly deterministic. The film ends up being more about the generational chasm in academia than about #MeToo, an ostensibly central theme that ends up falling to the sidelines. As its moral quicksand takes over, the movie seems to have made up its mind about its most enigmatic character, sabotaging Guadagnino's commitment to explore the shades of gray the material presents. He's made a well-crafted, well-acted misfire, one that drinks the venom of diminishing returns.
“After the Hunt” starts Friday in wide release, including at AMC Aventura 24, AMC Sunset Place 24, CMX Brickell City Centre, CMX Dolphin 19, Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas Coconut Grove and Regal Dania Pointe.
