RIOTUS

In the last 17 months, director Luca Guadagnino has released three films: Challengers, Queer, and After the Hunt. While each plays in its own arena—winning, addiction, or dark academia—all three center on the messy intersections of love and obsession. It makes sense. Guadagnino is a literary director; his work has a certain visual poetry. For him, themes and storytelling are inseparable and his characters are frequently symbolic. For instance, In Challengers, Zendaya’s Tashi is tennis, in Queer, Drew Starkey’s Allerton is a drug. 

Written by Nora Garrett, in her debut, and set at Yale, After the Hunt endows each character with a specific archetype from academia:

Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff is the buttoned-up, unreachable ethics professor. She’s the one everyone chases for recognition and approval.

Ayo Edebiri plays Maggie Price, Alma’s opportunistic favorite PhD student. She’s the one who wants to step into her mentor’s shoes.

Andrew Garfield is Hank Gibson, the charismatic young professor with an ego as overactive as his self-righteousness. He’s the entitled one, who believes he should’ve been born rich, but since he wasn’t, he should be adored.

Meanwhile, Michael Stuhlbarg is the VIP as Frederik, Alma’s prissy psychoanalyst husband. He’s the one nobody listens to, but everyone should. And Chloë Sevigny portrays Dr. Kim Sayers, the psychology professor who seems inane but takes every opportunity to prove her superiority.

When seething secrets, flaws, and desires collide within this circle of elites, the consequences are complicated and purposefully uncertain. An odd case of identity theft, an assault allegation we’re meant to question, and some truly pretentious and possibly criminal behavior. It’s a set-up that makes you lean in.

In its certainty about tainted ambition and its narrative grayness, After the Hunt is excellently-acted and produced. A fact that doesn’t need more proof than the filmographies of its stars. Their chemistry is intense and, at times, comedic—rooted in self-serving stakes and fundamental foibles. Shot by Malik Hassan Sayeed, and edited by Marco Costa, the film is as visually engaging as we’d expect from a Guadagnino project. Of course, the Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross soundtrack doesn’t miss. That doesn’t need to be said, but should be shouted. The soundtrack and needle drops deserve a James Beard Award; that’s the depth of their flavor. And yet, After the Hunt does not defend its dissertation. 

The first half yanks us into its morally gray manipulations with a suspense bordering on fear; halfway through, the tension flags and the psychological thrills deflate into a slice of academic life. By then, if After the Hunt has a point, it’s a dull one. The peak is when you realize these people are awful, but that doesn’t absolve them from the things they do to each other. I’m also predicting Andrew Garfield will inspire new memes. First, there’s the sweater, second, there’s the boxers in bed.

The problem is, After the Hunt is so proud of itself. The storytelling is almost smug. As the revelations roll out, there’s a sense we’re sitting in on a lecture about how idiotic we all are. Case in point, a scene where Alma crashes out after a PhD student confuses the concept of the “philosophical other” (anyone or anything distinctly different from oneself) with “othering” (the act of alienating a group and often dehumanizing them). Or when Maggie and Hank each weaponize two very different forms of privilege, despite her experience with discrimination for her identity and his for his upbringing. And then again, when Kim breaks doctor-patient privilege like it’s the seal on a soda. 

That’s it. A Seinfeld-ish clique, but on the dark academia side, does a bunch of stuff, it doesn’t change anything, the credits roll, and you go home. Wait. Maybe in my dissatisfaction, I’ve just stumbled onto the point: After the Hunt is about the lack of consequences for unchecked privilege—and in life as it is on film, that’s a deeply unsatisfying way for the story to end.