A college professor finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star pupil levels an accusation against one of her colleagues and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come to light.

Luca Guadagnino’s latest film is a college set drama where an accusation of sexual abuse causes ruptures and puts an experienced college professor in the crosshairs. It stars Julia Roberts as Alma, the professor caught in the middle, alongside Ayo Edebiri as the accuser Maggie and Andrew Garfield as the accused, Hank, with the movie centering on the fallout when Maggie accuses Hank of sexually assaulting her after he walked her home after a party.

This is an interesting topic for a film and Guadagnino has shown in his career to date that he is a deft hand at moving between genres, but ‘After the Hunt’ is ultimately quite a muddled film that doesn’t know how to bring its themes together. In terms of the good aspects, I liked the thought provoking approach taken to a challenging subject, and a willingness to be bold in showing how the different characters react to the situation, often in selfish ways that puts themselves above the victim. That part rings true, and the central performances are very good, from Roberts in particular who possibly gives her best performance in a number of years.

It is in other elements where the film struggles, led by the reliance on an unlikely contrivance for a character to find out a piece of key information, and a script that never really makes its mind up about how it wants to tell this story and what aspects it wants to focus on. That leads to a rather conflicting viewing experience that presents a lot of talking points without quite knowing how to bring them together into a satisfying narrative. I also felt there were some other aspects that didn’t work, namely Michael Stuhlbarg’s performance as Alma’s husband which is weird and feels out of sync with the rest of the film.

‘After the Hunt’ is an ambitious film with plenty of good ideas and strong leading performances but it is let down by a contrived and conflicted narrative that undermines the positive parts of the film.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Luca Guadagnino

Starring: Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt32159989/