The stars of Luca Guadagnino's campus thriller After the Hunt are embracing the uncertainty that comes with the film's conflicting narratives.
The movie, which premiered at the New York Film Festival, explores the fallout when promising PhD candidate Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) accuses professor Hank (Andrew Garfield) of sexual misconduct, and how this affects Maggie's mentor Alma (Julia Roberts), who is also close friends and colleagues with Hank.
The film's stars, including Garfield, Edebiri, and Michael Stuhlbarg, have indicated that they are happy to welcome the uncertainty and questions provoked by the story.
"It's fascinating to play with what's conscious, what's unconscious, in terms of what's driving these people, what motives are hidden from ourselves," Garfield said.
Stuhlbarg, who plays Alma's psychiatrist husband Frederick, added that the word "ambiguity" felt "very appropriate for this experience." "It's like watching a slow motion train wreck," he said. "You don't know what's going to happen, but you feel something's coming."
Edebiri praised the rehearsal period at Roberts' house as giving them license to explore different interpretations.
"We were just getting to excavate this text together, and I feel like there were just early conversations that we were having with each other, and also that I was having with Luca, where I feel like it was like we were getting permission, in a way, to, like, fill in the blanks where we needed to fill them in, and then where there needed to be space and ambiguity, or in moments with each other, to maybe find things that are more primal, we just got license to do that," she said.
Roberts wouldn't reveal what she thought truly happened or if she even wanted to know that to play Alma, but she did have an answer for what she thinks the film is truly about.
"There's a song that plays in this film seven times... and it's a song about forgiveness," she said. "And I think it says so much about these relationships and how Luca asked us to approach them and construct them and what he asked of us as artists to find and articulate in the characters we were portraying."
The film's screenwriter, Nora Garrett, said that she and the team behind the film were welcoming the questions, conversations, and opinions being shared after people saw the film.
"I think everyone will see this film with their own particular lens," Stuhlbarg told The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet ahead of "After the Hunt"'s opening night screening.
"I think it presents quandaries to an audience, and it's up to them to decide what really happened, and I think it gets conversations going, and I'm delighted that those conversations seem to continue and they seem to be happening after every screening of the film."
