The clock is ticking in Luca Guadagnino’s AFTER THE HUNT – it’s unclear for who. The threatening sound of a time bomb about to explode repeatedly overlays the soundtrack. A disturbing element of suspense that the Italian director prominently uses without ever solving the mystery. This is exemplary of this film, which hints at many things but doesn’t explain much.

The key figure in the film is the charismatic philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts). It isn’t a given to her that she’s teaching at the prestigious Yale University. Her confident demeanor on campus is founded on a mixture of brilliance and a fighting spirit. At home, her psychiatrist husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg) has resigned himself to the fact that he loves his wife more than she loves him, but the bond between them is strong enough to even withstand Alma’s emotionally loaded friendship with university colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield). When her best student Maggie (Ado Edebiri) tells Alma about a disturbing incident with Hank where he “crossed a boundary,“ her orderly life is thrown out of whack.

Alma shows understanding for Maggie’s distress – up to a certain point. There’s no clear evidence of rape. However, Hank is expelled from the university once the incident is made public, which Alma is also involved with. The situation is complicated: she and Hank recently applied for a tenured position, the scandal takes him out of the running. Alma must decide who her loyalty lies with in this murky matter.

Guadagnino goes without big spectacles in this film, because the ambivalence of every individual character creates an unsettling dynamic. The abuse suspicion serves as a catalyzer for a series of toxic reactions and sheds light on old trauma, unfulfilled desires and many power games. The bigger the chaos, the more Alma becomes a gravitational center around which the many controversies revolve. Roberts embodies her with impressive control: her stony silence, even amid the most dreadful cramps caused by a slowly growing stomach ulcer, makes her inner turmoil all the more powerful and the pain even more intense. Her steely gaze speaks louder than any word in this dialogue-rich drama, which leaves its audience strangely sobered.

Pamela Jahn

Translation: Elinor Lewy