The director Luca Guadagnino (Challengers and Call Me by Your Name) poses an interesting question for this reviewer with his latest film, After the Hunt. Can you enjoy a movie that you feel absolutely no connection to? Will an amazing performance by an against-type Julia Roberts help with this conundrum?
Set in the overwhelmingly pretentious world of the professorial elite of Yale, Guadagnino lays down the challenge of finding anything parallel between you and the lives of these self-ordained aristocrats. If you live in the normal world and use speech that doesn’t require a dictionary to translate, the challenge to relate becomes even more elusive.
Along the way, there are directorial and cinematic decisions that provide an even bumpier road. Quick cuts before headlines are read and dropping the ambient light to near darkness during crucial scenes keep you on your toes. And throughout all this is Roberts’ performance, a marvel of balancing repugnancy and appreciation for her flawed character. This also takes place while a masterful job of make-up and lighting ages her decades right before your eyes.
By the film’s end, the question posed at first is no closer to being answered. But hours and even days later, and having the film and its eccentricities still occupying one’s mind, then this becomes the legacy. With so much disposable art being paraded as significant, is this approach actually a bad thing?
Rob Hudson
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