After the Hunt (2025, Luca Guadagnino)

40/100

Laughed out loud and shook my head in disbelief at the opening credit sequence, which faithfully replicates that of every Woody Allen film since Love and Death. Would this be another When Harry Met Sally? No, it's another Oleanna, cheekily alluding to Allen's cancellation while daring to present a possibly false accusation of sexual assault—one that paints an unflattering picture of everyone involved (including the queer accuser of color who's romantically involved with a non-binary trans person!). In theory, I find that far more dramatically compelling than something like, say, The Assistant, in which there's never a smidgen of doubt regarding who's virtuous and who's monstrous (and I quite liked Oleanna onstage—saw the original off-Broadway production with William H. Macy and Rebecca Pidgeon—though Mamet couldn't make it work as a movie). But actor-turned-first-time screenwriter Nora Garrett (who I apparently saw as "Waitress" in Beirut) has more guts than talent, at this point. After the Hunt hinges on some of the clunkiest plotting in recent memory: Not only does Julia Roberts' character (the accuser's mentor and the accused's best friend) have a secret, comically relevant past, the nature of which gets teasingly withheld for ages, but she keeps evidence of said incident taped to the underside of a bathroom cabinet, where her husband has never stumbled upon it but the accuser immediately does while looking for toilet paper. Dialogue's sometimes amusingly brittle, but an attempted TÁR-style anti-PC rant has been overwritten to the point that it's closer kin to America Ferrera's speech toward the end of Barbie. And while I admire Roberts' refusal to telegraph Alma's mindset, she pushes it so far that Alma's various betrayals don't properly register. (In particular, it's not at all clear in the moment that Alma telling Yale's dean that she believes Maggie is an expedient lie.) Loved every moment of Michael Stuhlbarg passive-aggressively protesting his voluntary emasculation, but that was the only thing in After the Hunt that felt even remotely persuasive or insightful to me. The rest certainly does hold your attention by way of sheer provocation, though, and that's not nothing.