“We are in the business of optics, not substance,” exclaimed one character midway through After the Hunt. Coincidentally and inadvertently, I think that just about sums up my feelings about the film. True to form with last year’s Queer, Luca Guadagnino has created a lavish and meticulous crafted world, but the story falls flat despite its ideals to be hard-hitting.
Guadagnino is a curator of what feels like the Avengers of craftspeople: the score, the production design, costume, and cinematography are beautifully tailored to this world. The score in particular shoulders the tension of the film, since narrative doesn’t seem to maintain it on its own accord. Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Luca are an undeniable partnership in their fourth go-around as collaborators, having previously worked on Bones and All, Challengers, and Queer.
The performances in this film are also quite good across the board, though I do wish we would get more of the supporting cast. It’s so refreshing to see Julia Roberts in a grounded dramatic role on screen again, the last of memory was 2018’s Ben is Back. She is steely, mysterious and just everything you would want to see out of Julia Roberts in 2025. Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri don’t get a ton of screen time for being in the principal cast, but they deliver on the assignment.
But my biggest surprise was Michael Stuhlbarg, who steals the show. He unexpectedly holds a ton of the emotional weight of the movie, but also the comedic levity, an incredibly difficult tightrope to navigate as an actor.
But all that is good about the film, is done to waste with a story that is glaringly bad. The nearly two and a half hour runtime absolutely meanders. A Me-Too-era narrative should have so much to explore thematically, but this film decides only to skim the surface and resist any meaningful contribution to the conversation. Instead of thinking substantively about the matters on screen, we are instead ham-fisted abstract and adjacent philosophical ideas that the audience is maybe meant to connect to the narrative on our own(?).
I don’t need story to be tidy, but a POV or focus would have helped ground the narrative here considerably. Unfortunately this is the same complaint I lodged against Queer, so this no longer is a one-off situation with Guadagnino’s screenwriters.
It sounds unfair, but I firmly believe Luca Guadagnino is most successful when he’s not adapting abstract stories or introducing abstraction to stories. Since Call Me by Your Name, his filmography has been a mixed bag. All of his films always look incredible, I just wish he could match the level of excellence below-the-line with that of the stories he chooses to direct.
