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![](\"https:\/\/cdn.craft.cloud\/26ed9c78-feb7-4ee6-8ddf-262fd7bafb2d\/assets\/tco\/images\/Andrew-Garfield-and-Julia-Roberts-in-After-the-Hunt-Luca-Guadagnino.jpg\")
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Desire is the lifeblood that runs through Luca Guadagnino\u2019s filmography. Usually this takes the form of carnal or romantic need \u2013 though through Bones and All<\/i><\/a>, Challengers<\/i><\/a> and Queer<\/i><\/a> he explored cannibalism, sporting greatness and addiction. In After the Hunt,<\/i> from a\u00a0script written by Nora Garrett, it\u2019s the pursuit of power that initially seems to motivate the shrewd philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts, welcome back!) as she vies for a\u00a0tenure position at Yale University. Her potential competition is her close friend and colleague Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield), a\u00a0rakish manchild who still smokes indoors and never quite buttons his shirt correctly. But Alma\u2019s gently withering husband Frederick, a\u00a0psychoanalyst, wonders if Alma and Hank have considered what they\u2019ll do if they manage to land the prize they\u2019ve been chasing all their professional lives. Perhaps it\u2019s the chase rather than the spoils that thrill them.<\/p>\n At any rate, a\u00a0revelation from grad student Maggie Price (Ayo Edibiri) throws a\u00a0spanner in the works. The morning after a\u00a0lively dinner party at Alma and Frederick\u2019s achingly chic New Haven apartment, she turns up shivering and soaked on Alma\u2019s doorstep. She confides in Alma that Hank sexually assaulted her following the party, and is disturbed when her professor reacts with apparent suspicion rather than sympathy. In turn, Hank pleads his innocence, claiming he caught Maggie cheating and this is her attempt to get even. One might expect the tension in After the Hunt to revolve around Alma\u2019s uncertainty regarding who\u2019s telling the truth, but this is less important to her that the potential threat to her career that her unwilling involvement creates.<\/p>\n The \u200b\u2018<\/span>He said, she said\u2019 dynamic in Hollywood has exploded since the 2017<\/span> MeToo movement with varying results, but just as Alma\u2019s interests lie elsewhere, so do Guadagnino\u2019s. It\u2019s not a\u00a0question of how reliable or perfect a\u00a0victim Maggie is (Alma states early on that she believes Maggie, and context clues about Hank speak to his behaviour) but rather how this event causes Alma\u2019s carefully curated life to unravel as she\u2019s forced to confront a\u00a0secret from her own past as well as the nature of her relationships with both Hank and Maggie.<\/p>\n While After the Hunt <\/i>does dabble in the \u200b\u201c<\/span>cancel culture\u201d rhetoric which feels inextricably linked to sexual assault allegations in contemporary society receives some attention, it\u2019s largely in the sense that Alma and Maggie\u2019s ideas around justice seem incompatible. The generational, class and racial divides between the two effectively form a\u00a0gulf of disagreements, with the common bond of womanhood alone not enough to provide safety. Yet there\u2019s no obvious villain in either Alma or Maggie; Alma attempts to dissuade Maggie from pressing charges against Hank less out of fealty to him and more because she knows that this could mean Maggie is defined by her victimhood. On the other hand, Maggie views Alma\u2019s attempts to dissuade her as a\u00a0heartless cover-up to protect herself, Hank and the university rather than the actual victim.<\/p>\n The complexity of Alma as a\u00a0character is pure Guadagnino, a\u00a0natural fit into a\u00a0cinematic body of work defined by the prospect of voracious hunger, and offers Roberts her best role since 2004<\/span>\u2019s closer. She\u2019s icy and impervious \u2013 the sort of glamorous college professor that makes students sit up straighter in class \u2013 and Roberts, regal and just a\u00a0little wretched, has something to sink her teeth into. She\u2019s complimented by Guadagnino returning player Michael Stuhlbarg, charming as the lightly eccentric, long-suffering husband who loves Alma unconditionally despite her flaws. Garfield is perhaps a\u00a0little young for his part, but playing against type as a\u00a0dislikable but all-too-recognisable cad. Despite her extremely charming off-screen presence and luminosity, Edibiri also seems a\u00a0little miscast; she\u2019s not quite able to hold her own against Roberts and there\u2019s a\u00a0self-conscious streak to her performance that veers distracting.<\/p>\n As ever Guadagnino delights in exploring the ways in which people crave more, more, more, and After the Hunt is salient regarding the gulf between generations of feminists, such as the amount of misogyny one should be expected to put up with on a\u00a0day-to-day basis and what exactly a\u00a0power imbalance looks like. If there is one major quibble, it\u2019s that the script doesn\u2019t quite trust its audience enough to end on a\u00a0moving scene between Roberts and Stuhlbarg that also happens to be the most beautifully composed in the film, instead opting for an unnecessary over-explanatory coda. But the smart, keenly observed and undoubtedly thorny power play of After the Hunt <\/i>make it an arresting psychodrama, confronting our willingness to swallow our own suffering in the name of self-preservation as well as what we owe to ourselves and each other in an imperfect, cheerfully cutthroat society.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nGet more Little White\u00a0Lies<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n