Andrew Garfield as Hank and Julia Roberts as Alma in “After the Hunt.”
Amazon MGM Studios
Warning: Spoilers ahead for After the Hunt.
After tackling queer romances, horror and a tennis-fueled love triangle, filmmaker Luca Guadagnino is heading into new territory: philosophy.
Guadagnino’s latest film, After the Hunt, stars Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff, a Yale philosophy professor whose life gets shaken up after Maggie Resnick (Ayo Edebiri), a PHD candidate and mentee, accuses Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield), Alma’s colleague and close friend, of sexual assault.
Here’s how the drama is resolved and what happens to the main characters.
Maggie’s Accusations Stir Up Alma’s Feelings About A Secret From Her Past
Julia Roberts as Alma in “After the Hunt.”
Amazon MGM Studios
Maggie and Hank share different accounts of what happened between them. Maggie says Hank “crossed the line” after she said no and assaulted her, which Hank denies. Alma gets caught in the middle, as both of them ask for her support and testimony.
To complicate matters, Alma and Hank are both up for tenure and only one of them can get it. Although Alma initially reacts unsympathetically toward Maggie, she sides with her and Hank accuses her of doing so because of the optics. Hank is fired, and the scandal becomes a huge story at Yale and beyond.
In one scene on campus, Alma belittles Maggie, calling her a “mediocre” student, with “accidental privilege” and a desperate need to impress. Maggie slaps her, and in a story for Rolling Stone, she says Alma failed her as a teacher, a woman and a mentor.
While in a hospital bed due to pain from perforated ulcers, Alma tells her doting husband Frederick (Michael Stuhlbarg) about the huge secret from her past that adds another layer to the film’s central conflict.
Alma reveals that, as a child, she was sexually assaulted and abused by her father’s best friend and coworker. Alma says they were in love and “it was the happiest time of my life.” She says that she became jealous after he started dating someone else, so to hurt him, Alma accused him of sexual abuse. She later retracted her story, but by that point, he had already committed suicide.
Frederick, a psychotherapist, says that Alma was young and it’s an adult’s responsibility to reject her. But Alma insists that she didn’t give him a choice. All these years later, Alma still blames herself and doesn’t think the man did anything wrong.
“The truth is that I loved him,” she says.
“And I love you,” Frederick replies.
Alma And Maggie Meet Again 5 Years Later
Ayo Edebiri as Maggie and Julia Roberts as Alma in “After the Hunt.”
Yannis Drakoulidis/Amazon MGM Studios
The film jumps five years into the future, to December 2024. Yale is covered in snow and Alma is the dean of the department.
At Maggie’s request, Alma meets with her at the Tandoor restaurant that Hank used to frequent with his students. As they catch up, the audience learns that Hank is now a spin doctor in politics, Alma and Frederick are still together and Maggie is engaged to someone named Nia, who she describes as “intelligent” and a director of curatorial affairs.
Alma apologizes for hurting Maggie, and Maggie admits that she was confused back then and didn’t know if she wanted to be Alma or be with her. Maggie says that they’re different people, and she gave up on the idea of retribution a long time ago. She asks Alma if she’s genuinely happy, and Alma says yes. Maggie says that she’s happy for her.
“You did it, you won,” Maggie says before leaving.
Alma asks for the check, puts a $20 bill on the table and exits. The film ends with the camera lingering on the money as an off-camera Guadagnino yells, “Cut!”
Guadagnino Said That Alma And Maggie’s Reunion Is A ‘Needed Reconciliation’
Actors Ayo Edebiri and Julia Roberts and director Luca Guadagnino on the set of “After the Hunt.”
Yannis Drakoulidis/Amazon MGM Studios
Guadagnino spoke about the meaning of the ending during a post-screening press conference for After the Hunt at New York Film Festival on September 26.
The director said that the final scene is like a “false reconciliation and maybe a needed reconciliation between these two women.”
“They’ve been fighting over, imposing on one another their own truth and being hurt by the incapacity of one another to understand their own truth and their secrets, and ultimately trying to find a way to own their powers in their hands,” Guadagnino said.
The director said that with so much time passing, the characters have come to see the situation from a different perspective.
“After the hunt, after the dust settles, with the distance of time and with the comfortability of the blanket of snow that kind of silences everything, all the screams and all the furies, they understand what one didn’t want from the other and the other way around and what they got and what they lost, but what is always going to be at the center of their lives is capital and that’s it,” he added.
“And once we say cut, we invite the audience to think that this is a movie and we wanted to entertain them and we wanted to tell the story from this perspective and this point of view,” the filmmaker said. “And then it’s an homage to George Cukor, of course, Rich and Famous.”
After the Hunt is now playing in select theaters, followed by a wide release on October 17.
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