Julia Roberts has defended her new film\u2019s positioning on #MeToo allegations and cancel culture, saying the film isn\u2019t trying to be controversial but is aimed at \u201cchallenging people to have a conversation\u201d.<\/p>\n
In After The Dark, Roberts stars as Yale professor Alma Olsson who struggles with her response after a dear friend and colleague is accused of sexual assault by one of her students.<\/p>\n
The film from Luca Guadagnino stirred controversy at its Venice Film Festival premiere this week, with some festival-goers criticising the storyline for undermining female accusers.<\/p>\n
The film\u2019s press call on Friday was tense at times, with Roberts pushing back on journalists suggesting the film\u2019s ambiguous handling of the topic was a set-back for women.<\/p>\n
Roberts brushed off such questions, saying the film was aimed at creating conversation, and that society was \u201closing the art of conversation in humanity right now\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not making statements, we are portraying these people in these moments of time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know about controversy, per se, but we are challenging people to have conversation. To be excited or infuriated about it is up to you.”<\/p>\n
The Hollywood star, one of the industry\u2019s highest-paid, said she had enjoyed playing a conflicted character. She’s joined in the film by Ayo Edeberi, who plays the young female student who raises the allegations, and Andrew Garfield as the accused academic.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the film, Ayo Edebiri plays the student character who Julia Roberts’ professor character struggles to believe. (Reuters: Yara Nardi)<\/p>\n
Guadagnino, the Italian auteur behind hit films Challengers and Call Me By Your Name, told reporters the film was not about \u201cmaking a manifesto to revive old-fashioned values\u201d but more an observation on the clash of perspectives.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not that one truth is most important, it\u2019s how we see the clash of truths and what is the boundary of these truths together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that the film also aimed to explore greed and power in the rarefied setting of academia. After The Dark is showing out of competition at Venice.<\/p>\n
Guadagnino last presented at the festival in 2022, with Queer, a romantic period drama starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey.<\/p>\n
ABC\/Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Julia Roberts has defended her new film\u2019s positioning on #MeToo allegations and cancel culture, saying the film isn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-106027","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}