‘After The Hunt’ Review: Julia Roberts is in Brittle Command Even IF LUCA GUADAGNINO ISNO in A #METOO DRAMA THAT MISTAKES ABRASIVE FOR PROVOCATIVE

If the Loudly Insistant Ticking Clock in the Opening Minutes of After the hunt Gets on Your Nerves, Ten Brace Yourself, Because You’re About to Get Clobbered with Two-A-A-QUARTER HOURS OF IT. Not Just The Intermittent Clock, But The Mind-Numbing Academia-Speak, The Hyper-Articulate Inter-Generation Savagery and The Streams of Circuitous Talk About and Torny Ethics, Sexual Violi Viol Dynamics. Director Luca Guadagnino and First-Time Screenwriter Nora Garrett Seem ConvinCed This Is All Very Provocative, Very Now with It Hard Questions and Subjective Truths. But Frankly Is Very Five Years Ago, Which Makes It More Puning.

Given that guadagnino’s Greatest Strengths have always been as a humanist, a sensualist and a bold visual stylelist, is baffling what Drew Him to Material Sont. Trafficking Heavily in Trauma. IT SEMS ALMOST IMPLAUSIBLE THAT The GIFTED FILMMAKER Who Just Gave Us The Sizzling Buoyance of Challengers d The Heady Intoxification of Queer Could Deliver Something SO Dour and Airless. The Woody Allen-Type Main Title Treatment Makes You Wonder If Guadagnino Is Doing His Version of A 21st Century InteriorsA Bergman Homage I’d Sooner Watch Again Than this, for Maureen Stapleton Alone.

Maybe It Was A DESIRE TO WORK WITH JULIA ROBERTS, FOR WHOM THIS IS ANA Undeniably Strong Showcase, Pouring Herself Into A Character Who’s All Sharp Edges Wart. Feelings or Anything Even Remotely Personal. But as riveting as she is, roberts ultimately is ill-served by a film so studiously cryptic that it ends up just frustating. To be fair, there are several electric confrontations, Distributed Evenly Enough to Enseure that After the hunt remains Absorbing. But Even SO, this is a Date Movie to Be Used in Relationship Sabotage Maneuvers.

YES, IS Part of the Point that Everybody Majoor Character in this Insular Bubble of Wealth, Privilege, Intellectual Elitism and Vigilant Cultural Sensitivity – I Refuse to Call IT. Some Degree, Even If They Start Out Way. That’s all very Well and It’s Not As if Movies Are Required to Fill A quota of Sympathetic Characters. But This Bunch Becomes Steadily More Distancing. Oh, Except for Chloë Sevigny, Dryly Amousing in A Frump Wig As Jaded Femnist Psychotherapist Kim, Who Only Perks Up Who Sheers Morrissey Croning.

Even the Normally Surefire Element of a Score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Rose, with Its Blasts of Dissonance Pumping Up The Squirm Factor, Adds To The Heavy-Going Effect of Way to be grating.

Roberts Plays Yale Philosophy Professor Alma Imhoff, Who, Along with Her Department Colleague and Closest Friend Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield), Can Almost Taste The Tenure Sheere. As the DRINKS FLOW DURING A GATHering of Faculty and Phd Students at Their Deluxe Digs, ALMA’S DOTING HUSBAND FREDERIC tenure and the other doesn’t. Would the Friendship Survive It?

HANK IS A SELF-SATISFIED Peacock and Chronic Flirt. So much so that some kind of laster Says, “everybody loves hank,” you might Think, “wait, are we talking about the same guy?” Much of his attention that evining is focused on the alma’s Star Doctor Doctoral Student Maggie (Ayo Ae Edebiri), Who Responds to His PlayFul Taunting About Who Her Generation at The Generation, Generation, Guin, His -His, Who Responds to HIS PLAYPUL TAUNTING, WHO Responds to His Play -Play, Generation Started Making Sweeping Generalizations About Nam.

WHEN OPINIONATED CLASSMATE ARTHUR (WILL PRICE) GRIPES ABOUT How Inclusion Has Bumped Men Like Him Out of the Competitive Academic Ranks, Maggie Is Quick To Clap Back. As a quer Black Woman, she have no time for “White, Male, Straight, CIS” People Crying About Victimhood After An Eternity of Automatic Advantage. Alma Concurs.

But Late The Next Day, Who She Finds Maggie on Her Doorstep Soaked From The Rain and Weeping, Alma Is More Cautotuos About Her Solidarity. Clearly in Distress, Maggie Stammers Out Her Account of What Happened After The Party, WHEN HANK WALKED HER HEME, Asked to Come Up For A NightCap “No.” She Says He Crossed A Line, and WHEN ALMA ASKS HOW FAR OVER OVER THE LINE HE WENT, MAGGIE BOLTS, MUTTERING THAT IT WAS A Mistake to Expert Support.

To the Filmmakers’ Credit, this does not Become Another “HE SAID/She SAID” DILEACTIC Descendent of David MAMET’S OleannaEven If Hank’s Blustry Explosion of Self-Righteous Anger Sems to Point That Way. He Claims He Went to Maggie’s Apartment Solely to Challenge Her Privately About What He DesCribes As Flagrant Plagiarism in One of Her Paper for Him.

There’s Also A Tang of Resentment in the fact that Hank Grew Up Without Money and Has Had to Work Hard to Rise in His Field, While He Thinks Maggie is a Mediocre Student. Billionaire Parents Among the Top College Donors. But Even Beng His Stunning ERUPTION INTO VITuperative Rage in the Hall Outside Alma’s Classroom – Played to the Hilt by Garfield – It’s Clear That Hank Is Such.

While He Knows Nothing of the Alleged Sexual Violation, Frederick Also Has His Doubts About Maggie, Needling His Wife for Alowing Her Vanity to Be Stoked by A Studnt Who. “Is she brilliant, or does she just Think You’re brilliant?” Frederick Asks Alma.

Stuhlbarg, Who Should Have Gotten Much More Athoutation for His Beautify Performance in Guadagnino’s Call me by your nameDesERves Better than Frederick. He Projects Serene Emotion Maturity and Makes Cassoulet Like It Sacred Offering Yet isn’t Averse to Infantile Tantrums of Petulant Jealousy. While He -Uninds After a Day of Seeing Patients by Blasting John Adams at Maximum Volume, A Scene in Wich He Does Something TRYING TO TALK MIGHT MAKE YOU WANT TO Kill People. HE BECOMES LIKE AN unfunny New Yorker Cartoon.

Edebiri Brings Her Customary Emotion Depth to Maggie, Putting Us in Her Corner Whoer Presses Charges and Ten Gets Uncomfortable with the Attention The National Generates Ant. However, Garrett Sems to Want To have it Both Ways with The Character (Who’s Writing Her DISTSERTATION ON Virtue Ethics), Giving Her Integrity But Thon. The suggestion that this rich kid might be partnered with ay/them-identifying translas law Student and Live in a shitty Apartment for the optics sems a cheap shot.

But The Center of the Drama Is Firmly Occupied by Alma, Who Is So Secretive She Keeps Quiet About an Illness that causes her debitating Pain and Nausea. . KNOWLEDGE OF ALMA’S HISTORY THAT MAKES HER THINK The PROFESR MIVHT HAVFERED A SIMILAR EXPERIENCE.

In Alma’s View, Maggie Crossed A Different Kind of Line. Roberts Brings A Jolt of Invigering Fury to One of the Movie’s Strongest Scenes, in Whol The Mentor Rips Into Her Mentee in Publish on a Campus Square With A. HILAROUSYLY, ALMA SHOves Maggie’s Partner Alex (Lío Mehiel) to the Sidelines by Sniping: “DON’T YOU HAVE Some OBCure Fucking Protest That You Should Go And Be Angry AT?” ALMA BELITTLES Every One of Maggie’s Life Choices with a Blistering Scorn She Later Regrets. Or doesn’t.

To some extra, the script take pains to keep alma unreadable. . Of the School’s Inquiry Into The Alleged Abuse, Is She Protecting Her Career, Staying Neutral Out of Respect for Her Long friend

THESE Are All Interesting Questions, Like Many Other Raissed in the Script. But The Movie Makes A DEFINITE CHOICE NOT TO ALLER TheM, EVEN IN A BIG-TWIST EPIROGUE FIVE YEARS LATER. That might have been an audacious move in a fig. But The Blanket Refusal Here to Throw the Audience A Bone Sems Like Self-Conscious Obfuscination.

SURE, IS EXCITING TO Watch Roberts Sprut Horns and Turn Spiky with Defensiveness in Another Great Scene When A Student Questions Whtinger She “Condones Othering. But We Desert More Substantial Compensation After Spending More than Two Hours with the Beople.