Critic's Notebook

Yannis Drakoulidi/Amazon MGM Studios

T.W.: sexual assault

Luca Guadagnino’s latest, premiering at the Venice International Film Festival, is “After the Hunt.” It often recalls Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn,” as each film takes place at an elite institution, where power and privilege prompt people to cross the line in their jostling for position. Instead of following a ruthless attempt at ladder climbing, “After the Hunt” scrutinizes the dynamic between faculty and students; adjunct professors yield tremendous influence in classrooms, yet their own positions on campus are tenuous without tenure.

Julia Roberts plays Alma, who teaches philosophy at Yale. Even if you’ve never gone to an Ivy League school, you must have heard of how Yale’s Amy Chua invites law students over to her home and grooms them to be Supreme Court clerks based on Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s personal tastes. Alma also does something similar with her students, especially given that her long-suffering husband, Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg), seemingly enjoys entertaining.

Faculty members always run the risk of getting overly familiar with their students, but this is especially true when alcohol is served. Maggie (Ayo Edbiri), Alma’s pet who even copies her fashion sense, inadvertently stumbles onto an envelope while looking for a roll of toilet tissue in the guest bathroom. It contains some private dirt on her favorite prof, and Maggie decides to pocket a newspaper clipping within.

Shortly thereafter, Maggie confides in Alma that she was sexually assaulted by Hank (Andrew Garfield), Alma’s friend and colleague, after leaving the dinner party with him. She is taken aback by the response or lack thereof, which, as you’d expect, may have something to do with her discovery in Alma’s guest bathroom on the night of the party. Alma is not a neutral bystander in the ensuing he-said-she-said, given her own relationship with Hank professionally and personally. There’s also this resentment, unspoken by Alma but articulated by Hank, of how Maggie has everything set up in life.

Written by Nora Garrett, “After the Hunt” would probably have been better in the hands of Ms. Fennell, who previously explored the subject of sexual assault with “Promising Young Woman.” Ms. Garrett engages in a kind of narrative bothsidesism since every character involved in this campus scandal is suspicious, toxic and unreliable.

The script’s ambiguities regarding the perpetrator and the victim are very nuanced, and Mr. Guadagnino seemingly backs away, possibly due to the optics of victim blaming. It’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t for any cis man tackling this theme. I am not sure if Mr. Guadagnino came down nearly as harshly on Alma and Maggie as Ms. Garrett intended. By the time “After the Hunt” concludes with an epilogue set five years from the alleged misconduct, everything seems to be tied up in a neat little bow. For survivors, that just ain’t it.