After The Hunt

Alma Olsson, Star der Academia in Yale, intelligent, elegant, kurz vor einem Karrieresprung, wird von der Studentin Maggie, Schwarz und aus reichem Hause, ins Vertrauen gezogen: Nach einer Party habe Almas langjähriger Freund und Kollege Hank sie vergewaltigt. Der streitet ab: Maggie wolle sich rächen, er habe ihr Plagiate nachgewiesen. In gebotener Ambiguität präsentiert der Film die Gemengelage von Wokeness, MeToo und Cancel Culture, von Diskriminierung, Privileg und (Macht-)Interessen. Opfer- und Täterrollen, Identitäten und Loyalitäten entziehen sich der Eindeutigkeit. Was „wirklich“ geschah, liegt am Ende in den Augen der Betrachter:innen. (Barbara Kronsfoth)

Ö1 Frühstücksfilm am 21. Oktober: Einlass ins Foyer und Kaffee ab 5.30 Uhr und ein Gratisfrühstück to go nach der Vorstellung!

Whether his films explore love, desire or morality, Luca Guadagnino has never been interested in bringing abstract, overarching ideas to the fore, but rather tracing out their murky, complex, slippery manifestations in human relationships. It is thus no wonder that he remains provocatively at odds with concepts like “cancel culture”, “anti-woke” or “post-Me Too”, which form the prism through which some have been inclined to interpret the latest entry in his daring filmography. AFTER THE HUNT sees Alma (Julia Roberts), a tenure-track philosophy professor at Yale, go through a personal and professional crisis when her admiring PhD student Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) accuses Alma’s long-standing colleague and more-than-friend Hank (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault. Adopting a relatively subdued, if still always stylish visual language compared to the director’s previous work, the film draws its force from verbal and non-verbal power plays. Yet even with a character-driven, psychologically and dramatically charged story like this, the ever-cunning Guadagnino refuses audiences the comfort of an emotional or moral anchor point, and instead confronts them with their own penchant for that particular need. (Öykü Sofuoğlu)

Luca Guadgnino (Auswahl): I AM LOVE (2009), A BIGGER SPLASH (2015), CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (2017), SUSPIRIA (2018), BONES AND ALL (2022), CHALLENGERS (2024), QUEER (2024)