{"id":189814,"date":"2025-08-31T18:14:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T18:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/189814\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T18:14:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T18:14:14","slug":"julia-roberts-has-entered-the-oscar-hunt-this-is-going-to-be-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/189814\/","title":{"rendered":"Julia Roberts has entered the Oscar hunt. This is going to be fun."},"content":{"rendered":"

VENICE \u2014 Anyone who loves the Oscars remembers Julia Roberts\u2019s best actress speech<\/a> for \u201cErin Brockovich\u201d in 2001. At nearly four minutes, it\u2019s legendary, iconic, joyful, unhinged, humble, a little self-centered, way too long and in the Top 5 of the 21st century \u2014 or maybe ever.<\/p>\n

Who can forget her starting off with that famous laugh and immediately turning to the orchestra conductor and saying, \u201cSir, you\u2019re doing a great job, but you\u2019re so quick with that stick, so why don\u2019t you sit, because I may never be here again?\u201d Or, in the middle of thanking director Steven Soderbergh, laughing again, thrusting her Oscar in the air and crying out, \u201cI love it up here!\u201d<\/p>\n

Roberts earned her place up there not just because of a great performance, but also because of the many years she\u2019d put into being the most charming woman on the planet, with a world of well-wishers for whom just seeing her hold that golden statue while beaming in a black-and-white Valentino was its own reward.<\/p>\n

Julia. Never. Change!<\/p>\n

The exciting thing to discover Friday at the Venice Film Festival is that, well, she hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

For the first time in nearly 25 years, she might have a chance to prove herself wrong and get back up on that Oscars stage again. Might.<\/p>\n

If Roberts doesn\u2019t make it all the way there for her turn in Luca Guadagnino\u2019s thorny \u201cAfter the Hunt,\u201d it sure will be a blast watching her try \u2014 as demonstrated by all the zingers she launched during a news conference as her castmates Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri cracked up in the background.<\/p>\n

After just one question, she motioned to the cans of water sitting in front of everyone on the dais and said, \u201cI would just like to invite all my castmates to open their cans so the noise doesn\u2019t interrupt any of the incredible things we\u2019re going to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was like this every day on set. When her can had to be opened, everyone\u2019s can had to be opened,\u201d said Garfield, as Edebiri agreed. \u201cIt\u2019s like the microcosm of Julia Roberts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The buzz actually started Thursday night with a pair of rare evening press screenings of \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d (Roberts\u2019s \u201cjuiciest role in ages<\/a>\u201d), a twisted cancel-culture thriller in which the fallout from a sexual-assault accusation in Yale University\u2019s philosophy department ensnares everyone who touches it in a web of competing lies and motivations.<\/p>\n

At the center is Roberts\u2019s Alma, a philosophy professor whose world is turned inside out when her favorite doctoral student, Maggie (Edebiri), accuses Alma\u2019s close friend \u2014 and toughest competition for what may be only one tenure spot \u2014 Hank (Garfield) of raping her. But it\u2019s Alma\u2019s less than immediately supportive reaction when Maggie tells her what happened that really sets the movie\u2019s thorny sexual politics in motion. When Hank tells Alma that Maggie\u2019s accusations came after he\u2019d confronted her about plagiarizing her thesis, it\u2019s hard to know whom she believes, or whom we should, particularly as her own moves dig her deeper into a scandal that she never asked to be a part of in the first place.<\/p>\n

Is this an anti-#MeToo movie? Anti-feminist? Simply anti-privilege? Pro-skepticism? A muddled \u201chumans are complicated\u201d parable? A \u201cRashomon\u201d riff<\/a>? Is Alma out of touch or simply out to save her own hide?<\/p>\n

Multiple critics pointed out that Guadagnino echoed Woody Allen\u2019s<\/a> trademark opening credit design (white Windsor Light Condensed letters with names in alphabetical order, set to jazz), perhaps broadcasting that the director has as much sympathy for the accused as the accusers. In the news conference, he confirmed that he had been thinking about Allen and the way we look at the art of an artist who\u2019s having problems. But he also just liked the way it looked. \u201cBy the way, it\u2019s a classic, that kind of font. It goes beyond Woody now,\u201d Guadagnino said.<\/p>\n

Whatever message \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d is sending, it\u2019s not landing well. The movie\u2019s Tomatometer score<\/a> is at 48 percent, not great for a film from a beloved director featuring the comeback of a megastar and two well-liked younger actors, and a movie that initially looked from its well-cut trailer to be an instant Oscar contender. (The movie premiered out of competition at Venice.)<\/p>\n

Confession, as a non-critic: I went to Yale, and I\u2019ve never met a single person who talks like this movie\u2019s wool-clad academics, who throw references to Kierkegaard and Foucault and \u201cperformative discontent\u201d and \u201cthe perceived existence of a collective morality\u201d into casual conversations. Variety\u2019s Owen Gleiberman described<\/a> \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d as \u201ca realistic academic soap opera,\u201d while Vulture\u2019s Bilge Ebiri wrote<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s not quite the heady intellectual drama it wants to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s not up for debate, though, is that Roberts is great in it. Who knows what prodded Roberts to reengage with being an actor who\u2019s also a movie star, instead of the other way around, but let\u2019s hope it lasts.<\/p>\n

Deadline\u2019s Damon Wise, calling her performance \u201castonishing,\u201d wrote <\/a>that the movie \u201cmay be a shock to unwary audiences lured in by Roberts\u2019s star wattage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comparisons to another recent cancel-culture movie, \u201cT\u00e1r<\/a>,\u201d are inevitable, but that part allowed Cate Blanchett to tear up the screen while having a total breakdown. Roberts is given the tough task of playing a prickly person who guards her privacy at all costs and is defined by what she doesn\u2019t say.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, at Venice, Roberts charmingly eviscerated every journalist in her path, even though half the questions were in Italian. She was such a convincing active listener \u2014 not to mention the only American on the dais not wearing translation headphones \u2014 that I was positive she was fluent until she heard her name and nonchalantly placed one earpiece to her head. The question was from an Italian woman who asked whether she thought the movie could be accused of being politically incorrect.<\/p>\n

Roberts: \u201cI just love the softball questions early in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

See also her response to Garfield, saying every character in the movie is an unreliable narrator and believes themselves to be the hero of the story: \u201cI would just say, agreeing with Andrew, that, yes, I am the hero of the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

To an Italian journalist who wanted to know what she loved about Venice: \u201cI had a great tour planned this morning, but I\u2019m here,\u201d she said, with a mock look of disappointment that got a ton of laughs.<\/p>\n

When someone\u2019s cellphone rang in the middle of one of her answers, without a millisecond of hesitation: \u201cShould we hold for that?\u201d<\/p>\n

The movie, Roberts said, wasn\u2019t meant to be universally liked. \u201cWe are challenging people to have a conversation and to be excited about that or infuriated by that. \u2026 We\u2019re just sharing these lives for this moment, and then want everyone to go away and talk to each other. That, to me, is the most exciting bit, because we\u2019re kind of losing the art of conversation in humanity right now. And if making this movie does anything, getting everybody to talk to each other, that is the most exciting thing that I feel we could accomplish.\u201d<\/p>\n

And when one female journalist told Roberts that the movie had caused controversy among other women leaving the press screening who thought it was setting back feminism by having Roberts\u2019s character question Maggie\u2019s rape accusation, the actress considered it carefully and asked the reporter to \u201cgive a little morsel\u201d more on what she meant.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot to be disagreeable, because it\u2019s not in my nature\u201d \u2014 everyone gave a knowing chuckle \u2014 \u201cbut the thing that you just said, Maria, that I love is that it revives old arguments,\u201d Roberts finally answered. To Roberts, the film questions whether we have really entered a postfeminist society. \u201cThe best part of your question,\u201d Roberts said, \u201cis you talking about how you all came out of the theater talking about it. And that\u2019s how we wanted it to feel, that everybody comes out of all these different feelings and emotions and points of views and you realize what you believe in strongly and what your convictions are, because we stir it all up for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

She grinned big \u2014 she loves it up there! \u2014 and put a pin in her answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, you\u2019re welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VENICE \u2014 Anyone who loves the Oscars remembers Julia Roberts\u2019s best actress speech for \u201cErin Brockovich\u201d in 2001.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":189815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[47632,171,6667,47633,58211,67,132,68,30989],"class_list":{"0":"post-189814","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-andrew-garfield","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-julia-roberts","11":"tag-luca-guadagnino","12":"tag-steven-soderbergh","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-venice-film-festival"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115124743181184923","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}