Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri
“AFTER THE HUNT” My rating: B (Prime)
138 minutes | MPAA rating: R
The latest from the prolific Luca Guadagnino (“Challengers,” “Call Me By Your Name,” “Bones and All,” “Suspiria”) is an academic “Rashomon,” a she said/he said puzzle populated by presumably smart people who do some really dumb things.
“After the Hunt” opens in the off-campus apartment of Yale philosophy professor Alma (Julia Roberts) and her psychiatrist husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg). They’re hosting a soiree for friends, colleagues and students, and just about everybody is conversing in pompous academia speak. They’re really, really irritating.
Among the partiers are Alma’s colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield), the kind of guy who puts his feet up on other folks’ furniture while waxing eloquently on existentialism. And then there’s Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), a grad student in philosophy (and daughter of one of the university’s biggest donors); everyone expects her Ph.D. dissertation to make a big splash.
“After the Hunt” centers on an accusation of sexual assault. The day after the party Maggie confides to Alma that Hank drove her home and, well, you know. (Actually we don’t know, because Nora Garrett’s screenplay is so fiendishly effective at suggesting things without actually getting down to the nitty gritty.)
But here’s the thing. Maggie is gay and may be secretly infatuated with Alma. And she recently uncovered evidence suggesting that Alma and Hank have been having an affair behind Frederik’s back. (Again, it’s suggested.Maybe it was just intense flirting.)
So perhaps the accusation of assault is a way to eliminate a competitor for Alma’s affections.
Hank, it turns out, is his own worst enemy. He’s evasive about just what went on with Maggie. And in his defense he says that he has accused Maggie of plagiarizing material for her dissertation. This may be her way of discrediting him before he can go public with his suspicions.
Alma is caught in the middle…no matter what she does one of these two will see it as a betrayal. In fact, Maggie submits to a newspaper interview in which she scorches Alma for her lack of support. Could racism be a part of it? (Maggie is black, you see.)
Pile on top of that Alma’s disdain for the self-righteous entitlement exuded by many of her students, and you can see a career collapse coming down the road.
And then there’s her health issues…Alma only recently returned to class after a health crisis and she’s coping with pain that has her doubling up in a fetal position. So she does something really dumb…she steals a prescription pad from the desk of her psychiatrist friend Kim (Chloe Sevigny) and fakes a script for opiates.
“After the Hunt” (a cryptic title I’m still trying to figure out) manages to be gripping even while withholding key pieces of information. This has not a little to do with Roberts’ performance, which gos from haughty to wretched wreck. She can look great or ghastly.
But everyone is solid, especially Stuhlbarg’s husband; Guadagnino seems to turn to this actor whenever he needs someone to represent non-flashy decency.
Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, Callum Turner
“ETERNITY” My rating: C (In theaters)
114 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
I really wanted to like the end-of-life romcom “Eternity,” but in the end it just made me want to rewatch Albert Brooks’ “Defending Your Life.”
In this supernatural love story from David Freyne an old man chokes on a pretzel and awakens on a train pulling into the afterlife. Larry (MilesTeller) finds he’s back in his 30-year-old body. His afterlife counselor (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) informs him that he must pick an eternity to reside in.
Turns out heaven has multiple destinations, from a beach world where it’s always sunny to library world (apparently not a very popular eternity). The trick is that once you’ve chosen, there’s no changing your mind.
Anyway, the newly dead must spend their first week at a sort of gigantic trade fair in which all the various eternities have set up booths to distributed enticing pamphlets and show fun-filled videos.
Some of this is kinda cute.
The film’s main plot, though, concerns the arrival of Larry’s wife Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) and a major complication. Joan’s first husband Luke (Callum Turner) has been hanging around in limbo for 70 years (he died in the Korean War), awaiting Joan’s arrival.
And now Larry and Luke must compete to see which one of them Joan will choose as an enternal partner.
Quite the conundrum…and one that Freyne and co-writer Patrick Cunnane can’t really finesse.
Part of the problem is that “Eternity” is nearly 30 minutes too long; after a while it starts to feel like an eternity watching it.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 