Many reviewers responded to After the Hunt as if Luca
Guadagnino had temporarily forgotten how to direct, and the film certainly
lacks the seamless, sink-in stylishness of Challengers or Call Me by
Your Name; possibly indeed seeming at times (noting for example its
lurching, too-close close-ups, indifferent framings and peculiar fixation on
hands) downright shoddy. But greater reflection and open-mindedness suggests a
sly strategy on the director’s part, indicated early on by the precise use of
Woody Allen-style opening credits, and at the very end by an audible “Cut,”
both making small contributions to a foregrounding of artifice and provocation that’s
evident in everything from the chaotically piling-up narrative to the barely-controlled
performances (the question of whether the actors are “good” hardly seems
relevant). The film initially teases us with the promise of a cozy
institutional saga, immersing us in a Yale philosophy department characterized
by strong, flirtatious collegiality and spiky banter, soon disrupted by a
student’s accusation of sexual assault against a teacher; from there it’s consistently
expectation-defying in its treatment of the core premise (for example making
little real attempt to engage with the facts and perspectives underling the
allegation, let alone to resolve them), along the way snatching away points of
certainty, throwing in much that’s mainly bewildering, ending up in a place
that seems barely explicable on its own terms, let alone as a logical outgrowth
of what preceded it. One certainly registers at the end though how the initial
warmth and sense of connection has been replaced by distance and isolation (the
final scene takes place in a diner that we previously saw bustling but is now
deserted, and with snow outside yet!), seemingly suggesting that the kinds of
stridently entitled machinations depicted in the film, however all-consuming at
the time, are ultimately detrimental to one’s social positioning and basic contentment.
No comments:
Post a Comment