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James Mottram

2.5/5 stars
“It happened at Yale.” So reads the caption in Luca Guadagnino’s slickly packaged, often exasperating After the Hunt, the tale of a philosophy professor caught in the crossfire of a sexual assault case.
Julia Roberts is Alma Imhoff, first seen hosting a drinks party alongside her husband Fredrik (Michael Stuhlbarg), with PhD student Maggie (The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri) in attendance.
When Maggie leaves, she does so with the flirtatious professor Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield). But later she returns, distraught.
“He crossed the line,” she says. “He assaulted me.”


We never see the assault, but the he-says-she-says accusations begin flying. While Maggie looks to press charges, Hank claims that Maggie is on the defensive after he discovered she plagiarised her dissertation.
Alma, in discussion to become a tenured professor, is tentative with her support on both sides.
“I wonder … if I can be cold sometimes,” she muses to the husband she is no longer intimate with; in one of the more amusing moments, she finds him asleep next to a laptop playing porn, which she gently turns off. Perhaps the admiration she gets from both Hank and Maggie is enough.
There are some subtleties in the script by Nora Garrett, like the way Maggie’s clothes – loafers, white trousers – echo Alma’s. But this rarefied world of privilege is likely to grate on most viewers, and in terms of exploring cancel culture, Todd Field’s Tár was far more daring.
Guadagnino, who frequently flirts with horror in his films, amps up the scratchy score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross as if he is out to frighten us.
What is pleasing is seeing Roberts in arguably the meatiest role she has had since her Oscar-winning turn in Erin Brockovich, one she tackles with gusto. She carries the film, essaying her character’s increasingly frazzled mental and physical state with great care.
There is also a lovely turn from Chloe Sevigny, almost unrecognisable as another campus figurehead.
Quite what the film is about is hard to discern. The perils of reporting an assault? The “coddled” universe of elite-level academia? The precious world of Gen Z “snowflakes”?

Certainly, it touches on the social minefield that we now live in. Even when The Smiths’ “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” blares, Sevigny’s character remarks how bold it is to play something sung by the now notorious Morrissey.
The magpie-like Guadagnino also borrows from the brilliant Anatomy of a Fall, with one scene where Fredrik keeps interrupting a dinner between Maggie and Alma, playing his music at top volume.
With woozy close-ups of these largely insufferable, self-centred characters prone to philosophical debate, it will likely leave you feeling as nauseous as Roberts’ increasingly sick professor.
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While Julia Roberts shines in After the Hunt, which explores the chaos of a sexual assault case, the real crux of the story remains unclear


While Julia Roberts shines in After the Hunt, which explores the chaos of a sexual assault case, the real crux of the story remains unclear.


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Review | Venice 2025: After the Hunt movie review – Julia Roberts in Luca Guadagnino’s muddled tale

While Julia Roberts shines in After the Hunt, which explores the chaos of a sexual assault case, the real crux of the story remains unclear