A One Mann’s Movies review of “After The Hunt” (From the 2025 London Film Festival). (2025, 3*, 15).
As for “Roofman“, “After The Hunt” is showing at the LFF but actually already out in cinemas! Which feels like a bit of a cheat!
I’m afraid I have a love/hate relationship with Luca Guadagnino films… well, “hate” is putting it too strongly… “ambivalence” might be a better word. And, come to think of it, “love” is putting it way too strongly as well. OK, let me rephrase… I have an ambivalent/ambivalent relationship with Luca Guadagnino films. The only film of his that I have really enjoyed has been “Challengers“. I quite liked the look of “After the Hunt” from the trailer: but I’m afraid I didn’t warm to the film, despite the star power of Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield. Very little of it struck me as very realistic.
One Mann’s Movies Rating:
Plot:
“It happened at Yale”. Alma (Julia Roberts) and Hank (Andrew Garfield) are Yale professors of Philosophy hoping to gain tenure. Either one or both might get it. They have a very informal relationship with some of their older students, inviting them to their private soirées. But when one student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), complains of inappropriate conduct, the lives of both Alma and Hank start to unwind.
Certification:
UK: 15; US: R. (From the BBFC web site: Very strong language, strong sex, sexual violence.)
Talent:
Starring: Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny, Lio Mehiel, David Leiber, Thaddea Graham, Will Price.
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino.
Written by: Nora Garrett.
Running Time: 2h 19m.
Summary:
Positives:
- Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield give stunning straight-to-camera speeches.
- There is a clever focus of Guadagnino on the character’s hands as they talk (which speak a thousand words).
- Some interesting, seldom voiced, observations on the Generation culture wars.
- Alma and Frederik are written as a believable long-married couple.
Negatives:
- I didn’t find many of the situations very realistic.
- In particular, Michael Stuhlbarg’s behaviour often seems bizarre.
- After the two hour mark, I’d really had enough.
Full Review of “After the Hunt”:
Highfalutin philosophical waffle.
There is a particular breed of intellectual filmgoer that I’m sure this film will appeal to. They will stroke their goatees appreciatively as Alma (Julia Roberts) or Hank (Andrew Garfield) come out with some philosophical prose from Descartes or Nietzsche. Sadly I expect there might be one such person for every ten cinema showings. For the rest of us, I suspect the reaction might be the reaction of Michael Palin to John Cleese’s ‘philosophy waiter’ in “Monty Python and the Meaning of Life: “Oh, Waiter. This conversation isn’t very good.”
For this script is stuffed with a whole lot of psycho-babble, in between the general plot points, that made this reviewer start to feel a bit stupid. The chatter is not just between Alma, Hank and the students: when Alma gets home to her husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg), he turns out to be a psychoanalyst and the chatter continues. Oh course he is! He couldn’t have been a bus driver or something!
A game of relationships.
The film is really a stressy-tale about the relationships of the three main protagonists:
- between Maggie and Hank, in a “Me-Too” / he said-she said tussle that I’m not sure we ever get to the absolute truth of;
- between the lesbian Maggie and Alma where, although Alma is straight, she seems to revel in the younger woman’s attentions; and
- between Alma and Hank where past tensions clash with the present issues as to which side of the fence Alma chooses to take on the sexual assault case. All of this stress is of no help to Alma’s gastric issues as she periodically convulses with pain.
My stress was heightened by the constantly ticking clock over the opening titles and also the opening scene. “When will that EVER shut up” I was thinking, which – like Chinese Water Torture – was surely its intention. The music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is also grating on the nerves: the eerie, off-key track over Maggie’s revelation is particularly impactful.
It plays some of this stuff off in interesting ways but in other scenes, the action just felt hollow and false to me.
A long-married couple.
What the script does get right – to a degree – is the sort of ribbing banter between Alma and Frederik. This is about the one part of the script that does feel vaguely natural. Of course, they have to spoil that by having their marriage as utterly sexless, setting us up for another backstory for later.
Stuhlbarg is a flamboyant psychoanalyst with some good lines: “Most people come to analysis to confirm that they don’t need help”. He’s a little over the top in his acting style but then dials it to 11 – literally – when he goes off in a huff over a meeting between Alma and Maggie at their flat and starts blaring out ultra loud jazz music. I couldn’t quite work out what the script was trying to say here, other than – in the words of Alma – that he could be a “complete asshole”. It didn’t seemed to sit with the sort of comfy, respectful relationship that the pair generally seemed to have.
Boomers vs Gen Z
Where the script also pokes some knowing fingers is into the ‘battle’ of opinions between the Boomer generation (represented by Alma) / Generation X (represented by Hank) and the Gen Z’s as represented by Maggie and her lesbian lover Alex (Lio Mehiel). There are some telling moments where the script derides the Gen Z’s for being afraid of stating a contrary opinion because they might risk impacting some snowflake’s mental health. “Not everything is meant to make you feel comfortable” scolds Alma. There is another exchange about the fact that Gen Z’s consider ‘grey-areas’ to be unacceptable: Hank retorts that only “privileged, coddled, hypocrites believe in black and white”.
This is quite interesting in relation to the accusation of sexual assault which clearly ISN’T just a snowflake thing but is the sort of thing that should be confronted and reported. But as the plot reveals, the “just get on with it” attitude of earlier generations might have been unhealthily applied to that aspect as well.
Brilliant actors, shame about the script.
Robert, Garfield and Edebiri all deliver sterling performances. A scene where Garfield flips out in rage is spectacularly done, making you firmly question your views on the case. And there are scenes in which Alma and Hank are having an argument where they are talking directly down the camera lens, with occasional cut aways to show what they are doing with their hands. This is a very handsy movie!
I would have loved to see these three in a simpler script, taking the basic story and following through the discussions with the university/police on all sides as more of a ‘courtroom drama’, exploring the culture wars as we went. But there is just too much ‘stuff’ trying to be crammed in where I thought it didn’t want to fit. The film passed the 2 hour mark and just went on and on and on: a “5 years later” caption appeared and I groaned a bit. I’d really had enough of the film by then.
Triggers
The subject matter is about sexual assault which might clearly be triggering to some viewers. However, note that we never actually get to see the events that happened, or were claimed to have happened, in Hank’s flat.
Summary Thoughts:
This was a perfectly watchable film with good performances. But I found it overlong and rather unfocused. It’s not one I would choose to watch again, unless the Illustrious Mrs Movie Man wants to.
“After the Hunt” is available to view in UK cinemas now… check out the Justwatch widget below.
Where to watch?
Trailer:
A trailer for the film is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8R6DMlDtxk.
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