The prolific and critically lauded Luca Guadagnino returns with Julia Roberts starring as Alma Imhoff, a professor at Yale University. When one of her colleagues and close friends, Hank Gibson, is accused of the sexual abuse of a student Alma is mentoring, she has to navigate both friendships whilst also coming to terms with her own secretive past.
I have not been a fan of Guadagnino’s work in the past including his two films last year, the silly Challengers and the overindulgent Queer. But what he can do is elicit fine performances from his cast. Roberts is as good as I have seen her, Chloe Sevigny is outstanding as Alma’s friend who has her trust abused, and Andrew Garfield is great as Hank, charming but also possibly dangerous. Although he does not rein in Michael Stuhlbarg who seems to be having a whale of a time as Alma’s husband, but also seems to be in a different movie.
The real problems are in Nora Garrett’s screenplay. She produces a few good scenes almost entirely early on, but as the film progresses, it falls apart. Garrett tries so hard to show there are two sides to a he said/she said scenario, that she ends up tying herself up in knots. Alma’s dark secret from her past and her illness serve no purpose other than to muddy things even more.
The score does not help either. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have done some brilliant work in the past, but this time, their music is unpleasant and very intrusive. Add to that, a maddening ticking clock device that is used for no apparent reason and to no effect, sound wise, After the Hunt is horrible.
It concludes with a final couple of scenes that make no sense based on what we have seen before and left me wondering what the point of the whole exercise was.
Rating: 5 out of 10