Not everyone is convinced by Queer director Luca Guadagnino’s new movie, After The Hunt
After the Hunt is in UK cinemas in October. (Alessandro Levati/Getty)
After the Hunt is in UK cinemas in October. (Alessandro Levati/Getty)
Luca Guadagnino’s latest film has received mixed reviews after premiering at the Venice Film Festival, despite reportedly receiving a a six-minute ovation.
After the Hunt is the latest big-screen outing for Luca Guadagnino, hot on the heels of Call Me By Your Name, Challengers and Queer. It follows Yale professor Alma, played by Pretty Woman star Julia Roberts, whose promising career is threatened by a scandal facing her colleague and friend Hank (Andrew Garfield who played Spider-Man three times between 2012 and 2021).
The film also stars The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri, and Chloë Sevigny, who worked with the director in Bones & All and HBO series We Are Who We Are.
Michael Stuhlbarg, who played Timothée Chalamet’s father in Call Me By Your Name, has also reunited with the Italian director. Trans actor Lio Mehiel is among the cast too.
What are critics saying about After The Hunt?
While some reviewers were exhilarated by the psychological thriller, others criticised the plot.
Writing for Little White Lies, Hannah Strong said: “The complexity of Alma as a character is pure Guadagnino, a natural fit into a cinematic body of work defined by the prospect of voracious hunger, and offers Roberts her best role since 2004’s Closer.”
The film contains a “smart, keenly observed and undoubtedly thorny power play” in what is “an arresting psychodrama”, Strong added.
The Times, meanwhile, predicted Roberts’ “fifth Oscar nomination and… second win”.
However, David Rooney told readers of The Hollywood Reporter: “It seems almost implausible that the gifted filmmaker who just gave us the sizzling buoyancy of Challengers and the heady intoxication of Queer could deliver something so dour and airless.”
And British Vogue’s Radhika Seth called the film a “jumble that this impressive cast can’t save”, although she did say of Roberts: “It’s a joy to see her throw caution to the wind and morph into a terrifying, no-holds-barred villain.”
The film has a 48 per cent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes.
After the Hunt is due in UK cinemas next month.
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