To give you a sense of the knotty conflicts, character dynamics and power struggles at play in Luca Guadagnino’s new film After the Hunt, during the film’s official Venice Film Festival press conference, Julia Roberts got asked out of the gate to offer her thoughts on whether the film undermines the feminist struggle.
“Not to be disagreeable because it’s not in my nature,” Roberts said with a grin as she defended the movie by countering that it’s only meant to inspire debate. “There’s a lot of old arguments that get rejuvenated in this movie in a way that does create conversation. The best part of your question is you talking about how you all came out of the theater talking about [the film], and that’s how we wanted it to feel — that everybody comes out with all these different feelings, emotions and points of views. You realize what you believe in strongly and what your convictions are because we stir it all up for you. So, you’re welcome.”
After the Hunt is described as psychological drama about college professor Alma Imhoff (Roberts) who finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when star student Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) accuses her colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) of assault. As events unfold, a dark secret from the professor’s past threatens to be revealed. Guadagnino directed from a script by Nora Garrett.
Actually, the pointed question was the second of the session, and it followed a journalist asking Roberts and Edebiri what was so attractive about playing such “troubled women.”
“Trouble is where the juicy stuff is. All that great complexity that Nora wrote for all the characters is what assembled this kind of a group,” Roberts responded, gesturing to the press conference panel that hosted Guadagnino, Edebiri, Garfield, Garrett, Chloë Sevigny and Michael Stuhlbarg. “It’s like dominoes of conflict, once one falls, then suddenly everywhere you turn, there’s some new piece of conflict and challenge. That’s what makes it worth getting up and going to work in the morning.”
As for Edebiri, she called the gig “a dream” because of the challenges it presented. “That’s how you grow,” she added. “That’s the type of movie I enjoy watching.”
Roberts and Edebiri in After the Hunt.
Yannis Drakoulidis, Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios
Roberts, who clearly enjoyed her time with Guadagnino as evidenced by her sartorial choice when arriving in Venice, said working on After the Hunt reminded her of Bruce Beresford’s Tender Mercies. The 1982 drama follows a broken-down, middle-aged country singer as he gets a new wife, reaches out to his long-lost daughter and tries to put his troubled life back together.
“I just thought there was something magical about the idea that a kind of camera just landed in a place and happened to document what was going on where it landed. That’s how I feel about this movie,” Roberts explained. “We’re not making statements. We are portraying these people in this moment in time, and the camera has fallen from the sky in this particular moment and and captures all this. That’s what is sort of incredible about it.”
Roberts continued: “It’s not so much that we’re making a statement. We’re just sharing these lives for this moment, and then we want everyone to go away and talk to each other. That, to me, is the most exciting bit because we’re kind of losing the art of conversation in humanity right now. If making this movie does anything, getting everybody to talk to each other is the most exciting thing that I feel we could accomplish.”
Conversations will surely be in full effect when After the Hunt team has its world premiere Friday evening here on the Lido inside Sala Grande. The 82nd edition of the Venice Film Festival runs Aug. 27-Sept. 6.
Amazon MGM Studios releases After the Hunt on Oct. 17.