Dallas Film Now.

Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, and Michael Stuhlberg star; Luca Guadagnino directed the drama. 

In the opening sequence, reason gets tossed out the window.

The setting is the bathroom of a college professor’s home, where one of the invitees to a gathering, college student Maggie Price (Ayo Edebiri), is searching for toilet paper. Upon finding it on the bottom shelf of a cabinet, she also spies, somehow, an envelope that has been taped to the top of the shelf, which she unaccountably pries loose and opens. Rifling through the contents, she sees a newspaper clipping in another language, which she then puts into her pocket, before re-affixing the envelope in the cabinet. 

It’s a risibly ridiculous scene, which immediately invites viewers to distrust the privacy-invading character, and also to disengage from the movie itself, which has barely begun. 

The sumptuous home belongs to philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts) and her husband Frederick Mendelssohn (Michael Stuhlberg), a psychiatrist who loves to play music at ear-splitting levels for some reason. (Is he losing his hearing?) The gathering also serves to introduce philosophy professor Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield), and the friendly, longtime relationship that they enjoy. Alma and Hank are both up for tenure at Yale University, with the rumor being that only one will be granted the job security that winning tenure will ensure. 

As the gathering concludes, Hank offers Maggie a ride home, which raises the eyebrows of everyone else. Sure enough, Maggie soon accuses Hank of sexual abuse, and Alma is stranded in the middle between them. 

The balance of the film follows events, mostly from Alma’s perspective, as she wrestles with the moral and philosophical questions that have arisen like a cloud of gnats. She keeps trying to swat them away, but they keep coming back, annoying and biting her relentlessly.   

As a film, After the Hunt very much feels like a stage play. Luca Guadagnino directs with many bold strokes, emphasizing the jarring, incongruous musical score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, as well as inexplicably cutting, often, to a close-up of hands, for no reason that is apparent to the viewer, though surely it’s intended to have some obscure meaning for somebody. 

Mostly, the film plays as though it’s a dog chasing after its own tail, clumsily doing the same thing over and over again, engaging in endless speechifying, consumed by arguing both sides of an exhausting debate, and eventually ending on a series of inconclusive and unsatisfying notes. One exits the theater, grateful for the performances, and infuriated by all the pointless arguments. 

The film is now playing in select area theaters.  For locations and showtimes, visit the official site.