I love the New York Film Festival, and they have a lot of great movies playing now or coming this week and next.
Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt” is not one of them.
“Hunt” already accrued negative reviews in Venice, after the NYFF signed it up and was stuck with it, so don’t blame them.
On paper, a movie by the director of “Challengers” starring Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield sounds like a winner. But it’s a mess, and an unpleasant one, that left people saying afterwards that it’s “challenging.” Maybe Luca, who’s Italian, got confused.
Two things to know upfront: “Hunt” opens like a Woody Allen movie, stealing the signature typeface and look of his best dramatic films right through the opening shot of cool people hanging around a richly appointed apartment. It’s ridiculous.
The other Easter egg here is that Roberts plays a character named Alma Imhoff, which sounds like “Emhoff” in the movie, a name that we know only from Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug.
Anyway: Alma is a strident Yale professor trying to get tenure. She’s married to Michael Stulhbarg’s menschy psychiatrist husband. They have no children, and live in a fabulous New Haven home. Alma, 58, is in a heavy flirtation-relationship with Andrew Garfield’s Hank (who’s 42). He’s mad for her. But a Black lesbian student name Maggie Resnick (come on) is obsessed with Alma.
Guadagnino — whose name Roberts mispronounced on stage during the Q&A despite them now being “family” — can’t decide if this gang is involved in a #Metoo story, a psychological thriller, or a meditation of the Yale campus covered in snow from the 1996 blizzard.
Alma, the center of this “TAR”-like story, is a steel magnolia wrapped in a Brillo pad. Why are all these people so fascinated by her? She’s extremely off putting, far from the charming Roberts characters of the 1990s. Roberts is mannered and defensive, with a pinched face and dyed blonde hair, which I guess suits Alma, who keeps falling over in unexplained pain, vomiting into toilets, and taking massive painkillers.
Meantime, Maggie — who’s living with a trans student who looks like Elliot Page (but isn’t) accuses Hank of rape (it seems like they did sleep together) just to upset Alma. It’s hard to hear a lot of the muffled dialogue or even see what’s going on with the low lighting and cinema verite aspects of the production. All the characters live with dread as they navigate these humorless relationships.
At one point, Garfield’s shaggy haired Hank disappears from the movie for quite a while, and Maggie’s complaint doesn’t seem too important, so the whole endeavor just seems to sag into the abyss. When Hank does return, he proves to be the creep that was in question. Stulhbarg’s character does some gourmet cooking, says reassuring sensible things, and plays classical music loudly in the kitchen. Alma finally finds a gastroenterologist. Maggie gets a fashion makeover.
The annual after party at Tavern on the Green is one of the funnest nights of the year. I got to meet the great theater actress Kathleen Chalfont and her famous photographer husband, Henry. Another fine actress with a stellar resume, Rutanya Alda, told me about her film, “Land of the Mustaches.”
Now the NYFF turns its attention to solid films starring or about George Clooney, Ethan Hawke, Bruce Springsteen, Daniel Day Lewis, and more pressing issues. Get your tickets at filmlinc.org.
