Writer: Nora Garrett
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Nora Garrett’s true story about a campus rape and the failure of staff to support the student makes for a surprisingly ambiguous film, After the Hunt, screening at the BFI London Film Festival. Directed by Luca Guadagnino and told from the perspective of a College professor, Alma, who compromises her own position with a devoted student, the problem with the film is it never knows what position it wants to take with the student who is presented so strangely that it is hard to determine what lines the film is going to pursue and is never quite brave enough to suggest she might have made it up. It’s clear she didn’t, but whether Alma is a positive role model or villain as a result of her stance on the matter is never quite decided.
Philosophy tutors Alma and Hank are used to adoring students and spend plenty of time with Maggie in particular, arguing about philosophy at parties at Alma’s lovely home. When Maggie reports Hank for rape, Alma flounders, becoming less sure of the student once she fails to help her unconditionally. A confrontation leads to further trouble for Alma when she advocates Maggie stay silent and her own misdemeanours are uncovered
After the Hunt starts well, a highly intellectualised scenario that Americans love with clever clever people sitting around in leather armchairs having deep debates on an average weekday evening. Some of that is hugely alienating for an audience, particularly for characterisation – do people really talk like this all the time, laying verbal traps for one another and use even their most emotional and disorientated moments to show off their erudition – if they do no one wants to hang out with them. Maybe at Yale but it’s hard to take these people seriously or care much about their suddenly complicated lives when they are so derisory about everything. And the film struggles to explain who the audience is meant to care about.
Certainly not Hank who is an arrogant and slimy creation who blows up inappropriately the moment his misdeeds catch up with him. Andrew Garfield makes him continually repellent especially when he wallows in self-pity later in the film proclaiming his innocence. The film never gives you a moment’s doubt that he’s a wrong ‘un so any ambiguity or jeopardy in After the Hunt slips away – it’s just baffling why it takes Alma so long to realise it. We don’t feel too much for Julia Roberts’ Alma either who believes Maggie and then refuses to support her in a court case. The performance makes less sense once Alma withdraws and instead focuses on Maggie’s semi-obsession which Alma finds objectionable, but again with the attitude of the woman changing from scene to scene and Alma guarding her own past, her overall motivation and loss of professional self-control seems hard to fathom when she wasn’t involved in the assault.
Ayo Edebiri makes a rounded job of Maggie at first and the scenes following the assault are particularly well played. But later in the film Maggie becomes more single white flame and, again, it is unclear why her ire is focused on Alma’s betrayals and not Hank’s. While the confirmation of her plagiarism is used to undercut her victimhood, it is badly handled. What does the film mean by it? Is Garrett going for roundedness that allows a woman to be multiple things simultaneously – in which case this is not achieve – or is it making some point about Maggie’s behaviour and her decision to publicise her experience? which is somehow distasteful – except it’s not. It’s just hard to say.
The performances are committed on the whole and these are important stories to tell, but it’s not clear if After the Act quite knows what it thinks and ultimately decides it’s too timid to say anything much at all.
After the Hunt is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2025 from 8-19 October.
