Luca Guadagnino’s films tackle the big questions: “What if tennis players were sexy?” “What if Suspiria was boring?” “What if a man had sex with fruit?” His latest, After the Hunt, asks an altogether more controversial question: “What if we shouldn’t believe women?”
This post-post-MeToo parable has the dubious honour of capturing the cultural crossroads at which we find ourselves, where social gains made over the last decade are under threat by a resurgent American right. One of these is the MeToo mantra “believe women” – that when an accusation of sexual assault is made, the default position should be to trust the accuser.
Guadagnino’s film follows the head of Yale’s philosophy department Alma (Julia Roberts), her dashing younger colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) and Alma’s favourite student Maggie (Ayo Edebiri). The three often hang out, expounding on the ethical issues du jour: is it a hard time to be a young man? Is “othering” someone intrinsically negative? Is philosophical reasoning more important than human feelings?
Things go awry when, after a drunken night out, Maggie claims to have been raped by Hank. Maggie tells Alma, who she might be in love with, but the professor responds coldly, perhaps because she’s in love with Hank. For his part, Hank claims he confronted Maggie over her plagiarised dissertation. Is Maggie telling the truth or does she have ulterior motives? Should we believe women?
Guadagnino, increasingly a love-him-or-hate-him kind of director, plays his cards close to his chest. Maggie, the precocious, performatively woke daughter of a billionaire, is certainly unlikable, while Hank has a louche, hangdog sort of charm. Of course, charming people are capable of raping unlikable people but I suspect Guadagnino is trying to say something less prosaic. What, exactly, I’m not entirely sure.
The first third unfolds with the pacing of a 90s psychological thriller, helped along by the slick visuals for which the director has made his name. Unusual shot choices abound, the camera focusing on a rowdy group in the background instead of the people talking, or keeping just one character in the corner of the frame, allowing you to luxuriate in the textures of this hallowed university campus.
But as the film progresses, things get boggier: Alma has a secret past that’s drip-fed a little too slowly, and doesn’t feel rounded even when we have all the facts. Guadagnino also goes overboard with culture wars touchstones: a trans partner for Maggie, campus protests, problematic nepotism. It’s not that Maggie shouldn’t have a trans partner, rather that his inclusion feels tokenistic: look how woke she is! She has a trans boyfriend!
I don’t think Guadagnino is a secret MAGA supporter, rather his bid to make something overtly provocative results in a film as cold and academic as his central character, labouring unhelpful hypotheticals to win an argument that never fully materialises. After the Hunt is one in the column for the Guadagnino haters.
• After the Hunt is on at the London Film Festival