New Luca Guadagnino (Challengers) movie starring Julia Roberts, Garfield, Edebiri is an ethical minefield. But is it good?

FILM
After the Hunt ★★★½
(MA) 139 minutes

Director Luca Guadagnino has created an ethical minefield in After the Hunt and for added impact he’s set the action among the staff of Yale University’s philosophy department.

In the opening scenes, Julia Roberts’ Professor Alma Imhoff is basking in the admiration of her small group of PhD students together with the affections of her colleague and close friend, Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield).

She and her husband, Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a psychoanalyst, are giving a dinner party. The wine is flowing freely, Hank gets very drunk and afterwards, he walks Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), one of the students, back to her apartment. The next day, a distraught Maggie tells Alma that Hank has assaulted her and that she wants Alma’s support in forcing him to face the consequences. Alma reacts with shock and a confusion that Maggie interprets as indifference and from that point, things rapidly get worse for everybody.

It’s the moral ground that Helen Garner covered in 1995 with The First Stone, but its foundations have shifted since the #MeToo movement opened up a generational divide among feminists. And in this case, Alma is caught in the middle – unable to believe the worst of a man she likes very much and wanting to help a student she regards as a protegee.

The screenplay bristles with surrounding complications. As well as being gay, Maggie is black. And she’s the daughter of the department’s wealthiest benefactors. Alma and Hank are vying for a single tenured position in the department and we later learn that Alma’s response to Maggie’s assault claim may be influenced by a secret from her own past.

And on the sidelines is Frederik, nursing his own resentments at the attention his wife lavishes on her students at his expense. He’s also convinced that Hank is in love with her and suspects that she reciprocates. As his response to these frustrations, he’s perfected his own unique form of domestic abuse, trying to make Alma feel beholden to him for all that he does in his self-appointed role as househusband and playing dissonant modern music at high volume in the mornings while she’s still half-asleep.

Guadagnino could never be called an unobtrusive director. He likes to advertise his presence. In his 2024 film Challengersset in the tennis world, racquet abuse was the issue. Every stroke resonated like a pistol shot and the ricochet rhythms of the editing were in synch with a pounding techno score. This time, he displays an inexplicable obsession with close-ups of people’s hands. And in addition to Frederik’s playlist, we’re treated to a loud musical soundtrack which is pursuing an emotional agenda all its own.