{"id":101293,"date":"2025-08-29T17:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T17:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/101293\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T17:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T17:18:09","slug":"julia-roberts-is-superb-in-a-biting-campus-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/101293\/","title":{"rendered":"Julia Roberts Is Superb In A Biting Campus Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cIt happened at Yale\u201d says the opening of Luca Guadagnino<\/a>\u2019s After the Hunt<\/a>, which seems a little superfluous given that the director plunges us straight into a smug, well-heeled cocktail party for academics, complete with airy, pretentious chatter about the likes of Foucault and Kierkegaard. If that \u2014 and a title font that echoes Woody Allen\u2019s go-to choice of white Windsor Light Condensed over a black background \u2014 sets anti-intellectual alarm bells ringing, then this might not be the film for you. But though its conversations about tenure can be a chore, its presentation of the modern campus as the Somme \u2014 in terms of the battleground for progressive politics \u2014 does strike a very timely chord. It\u2019s also Julia Roberts<\/a>\u2019 best work in a long, long time, a superb feat of casting that genuinely sends shivers and may well bury that old America\u2019s Sweetheart image for good.<\/p>\n

\n\tHer chic, killer wardrobe alone does a lot of the talking. She plays Alma Imhoff, a professor of philosophy, and she literally takes her work home with her, inviting staff and students alike to her nightly salons where issues such as collective morality and performative discontent are vigorously debated. A very vocal participant is her close friend and colleague Henrik \u201cHank\u201d Gibson (Andrew Garfield<\/a>),\u00a0who very much shares Alma\u2019s views on life in the social media age (\u201cWhen did offending someone become the pre-eminent cardinal sin?\u201d she wonders aloud). Representing the student body is Maggie Resnick (Ayo Edebiri<\/a>), an inquiring mind who is clearly besotted with Alma.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the elders discuss the now-besmirched personal lives of the likes of Carl Schmitt, Hegel and Heidegger, Maggie goes looking for the bathroom, and in her quest to find a fresh toilet roll finds, instead, a mysterious envelope. Its contents are viewed only fleetingly but it appears to contain a photograph and a newspaper cutting. Maggie puts everything back bar the cutting, which she puts in her pocket before returning. (The contents of this mysterious envelope may or may not be the catalyst for what happens next.) Anyway, after bidding her guests a good night, Alma catches sight of Maggie and Hank leaving together, the latter clearly the worse for wear but in seemingly high spirits.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlma thinks nothing of it, until Maggie \u2014 who is gay and lives with her non-binary lover Alex (Lio Mehiel) \u2014 comes to her apartment, with a story to tell. Hank, she claims, came to her apartment, became aggressive, and sexually assaulted her. When Alma confronts him, Hank denies this and becomes defensive, echoing a guest\u2019s assertion the night before \u2014 \u201cThe common enemy has been chosen, and it is the straight, white, cis man\u201d \u2014 by painting himself the victim of Maggie\u2019s prim, over-sensitive boundary issues in what he calls \u201cthis shallow cultural moment\u201d. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThough the issue is simple enough \u2014 did he, or didn\u2019t he? \u2014 it becomes an almost Brechtian challenge for Alma, who is torn along so many lines, primarily wanting to defend her friend but also maintain her professional composure and intellectual rigor. The fact that Maggie is Black, and rich, is a secondary powder keg that will blow up later in the story, when the firings start, the litany of cancellations pile up, and recriminations ricochet through the building. Needless to say, the shadow of David Mamet\u2019s notorious 1992 play Oleanna is everywhere, but Guadagnino \u2014 working from a script by Nora Garrett \u2014 gives his story a more generously female-weighted sense of balance. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe excesses of political correctness \u2014 and in particular the perverse right asserted by left-wing youth to stifle anything they don\u2019t agree with \u2014 gets a very firm and sometimes wickedly funny drubbing, especially when Alma is at the end of her tether with Maggie. (Indeed, there\u2019s a very entertaining gag about embattled British rock star Morrissey.) But though it bites, After the Hunt isn\u2019t just a diatribe about \u201cwoke\u201d culture, it\u2019s a genuine attempt to look at what\u2019s happening now and see where it might take us. Maybe the academic elite deserves to be taken down, with its mealy mouthed hypothesizing and bourgeois fetishization of education as something somehow \u201cbetter\u201d than knowledge.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt won\u2019t be a watercooler movie in that respect, and it may be a shock to unwary audiences lured in by Roberts\u2019s star wattage. But it could mark another milestone for the actress, being her strongest role since 2000\u2019s Erin Brockovich and an astonishing performance in its very own right. Lars Von Trier, eat your heart out.<\/p>\n

\n\tTitle: After The Hunt
Festival: Venice<\/a> (Competition)
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Screenwriter: Nora Garrett
Cast: Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chlo\u00eb Sevigny
Sales: Amazon MGM Studios, Sony Pictures Releasing International
Running time: 2 hrs 19 mins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt happened at Yale\u201d says the opening of Luca Guadagnino\u2019s After the Hunt, which seems a little superfluous…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49423,34214,49424,96,26396,18737,2839,263,56,54,55,10989,10306],"class_list":["post-101293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-after-the-hunt","tag-andrew-garfield","tag-ayo-edebiri","tag-entertainment","tag-julia-roberts","tag-luca-guadagnino","tag-movies","tag-review","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-venice","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}