2022\u2019s \u201cTar,\u201d<\/a> which is a much better movie.<\/p>\nA side effect of confronting these issues now, though, is that ripped-from-old-headlines \u201cHunt\u201d doesn\u2019t make for very challenging viewing. It\u2019s mostly entertaining, and its many mysteries captivate even if they don\u2019t collide into a satisfying finale.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Julia Roberts stars as a teacher caught up in a campus scandal in \u201cAfter the Hunt.\u201d \u00a9MGM\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n
As guests are leaving the ill-fated fete thrown by Alma and her pretentious and insufferable husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg), PHD student Maggie (Edebiri) hops on the elevator with a flirty young professor named Hank (Andrew Garfield) \u2014 Alma\u2019s closest colleague.<\/p>\n
A day later, Maggie shows up at Alma\u2019s, shaking and soaking wet. She emotionally tells her stone-faced teacher that the night took an ugly turn when Hank wound up back at her apartment for a nightcap. \u201cHe crossed a line,\u201d Maggie insists.<\/p>\n
Slimy Hank, given complexity by casting good-guy Garfield, angrily says he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Ayo Edebiri\u2019s Maggie tells Alma that she was raped by another professor. \u00a9MGM\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n
Wisely, the movie isn\u2019t so much about whether or not Hank raped Maggie, even though that allegation is the inciting incident. Instead, the story dives into Alma\u2019s peculiar role in the scandal as a woman with tenure on the brain who\u2019s looking out for No. 1. Is she protecting Hank? Is she saving herself? What is the secret envelope she hides in her bathroom?<\/p>\n
And Maggie isn\u2019t without her own shadowy past. Hank claims she ripped off someone else\u2019s writing, and he discovered the classroom crime right before Alma\u2019s event.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here and there, Guadagnino throws in a ticking clock noise, as if a bomb is about to go off. Few big ones do. The countdown that\u2019s reminiscent of an especially artsy episode of \u201c24\u201d adds tension, but the movie nevertheless loses momentum midway through. I became indifferent to its destination.<\/p>\n
The confrontations between Roberts and Edebiri can be friendly or ferocious. \u00a9MGM\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n
Our waning interest has nothing to do with Roberts, though. Swapping her radiant glossiness for a rough matte finish, the actress wills the blood to drain from her face as Alma\u2019s life is ripped apart. She\u2019s brittle and removed almost to the point of cruel. Her restraint makes her scattered temper flares terribly exciting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And her face-offs with Maggie \u2014 oscillating between friendly and ferocious \u2014 quicken the pulse. Edebiri does college-age anxiety disconcertingly well, and she is an easy fit into this moneyed cesspool of sweater vests and research libraries.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of the duo\u2019s confrontations comes at the end of the movie in a bizarre scene that isn\u2019t so much a talker as a muller. It\u2019s then that we finally understand, kinda, why the movie is hitting theaters in 2025 instead of 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It speaks, sort of, to the legacy of MeToo, and how the involved parties have fared since.<\/p>\n
The hunt is over, and we\u2019re left to wonder who was the predator and who was the prey in Alma, Maggie and Hank\u2019s story. And in the dangerous wilderness of New Haven, maybe everybody\u2019s both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The psychological drama \u201cAfter the Hunt,\u201d which is having its North American premiere at the New York Film…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":255044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,6667,48847,53,58178,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-255043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-julia-roberts","10":"tag-movie-reviews","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-new-york-film-festival","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115268184053616800","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255043","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=255043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}