There have been a handful of movies tackling #MeToo recently, including the new film After the Hunt. The movie follows a college professor (Julia Roberts) who has a personal and professional reckoning when a student (Ayo Edebiri) accuses a fellow professor (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault.
Many have criticized the way the film handles sexual assault and its aftermath. But director Luca Guadagnino believes that even calling it a #MeToo movie is a “lazy way to describe it.”
Today on Commotion, guest host Amil Niazi tries to figure out what kind of movie After the Hunt is with film critics Hoai-Tran Bui, Reanna Cruz and Jackson Weaver.
We’ve included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, including reviews of both Kiss of the Spiderwoman and Frankenstein, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.
WATCH | Today’s episode on YouTube:
Amil: Hoai-Tran, you saw this movie when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival. What did you think about the film?
Hoi-Tran: I had really high hopes for this film because I’m a big fan of Luca Guadagnino. Call Me by Your Name is one of my favourite movies ever. But this was one of the biggest disappointments for me out of Venice.
I think it’s just a mess. It wants to have its cake and eat it too. It couches its dialogue in this hyper-intellectual academic speak that shields the fact that the characters are not really saying anything at all, and they’re just repeating these shallow talking points that were recycled from the height of the #MeToo era. And I think Nora Garrett’s script is kind of to blame here. It tries really hard to cloak this entire affair and case in ambiguity that it ends up not coming to any kind of conclusion at all. Just [that] everyone is so grey and exists in these shades of grey that you’re like, “Well, who are these people?” I have no idea, they’re archetypes.
Amil: Reanna, as I mentioned, Guadagnino says he doesn’t see this as a #MeToo movie, and Ayo Edebiri feels the same way. When she was asked about it, she said, “I think it’s also like saying, ‘The Godfather is a movie about an Italian wedding.’ There’s so much richness happening in the lives of these characters, genuinely, and that boggles my mind.” What do you make of the way she’s speaking about the movie there? Is this a #MeToo movie?
Reanna: I think I’m inclined to disagree with her. I think this movie is fundamentally shallow. I think it is a #MeToo movie, and I think any attempt to obfuscate that perhaps is an effort to bring more people into the theatre because I think this was a hard film to market. I know I saw it based on the cast and because I like the director. And I think beyond that, I don’t think [the] general [public] is going to the movies to watch a #MeToo movie in 2025. And I think that’s an attempt to perhaps persuade the population to run to the theatre for After the Hunt. But I don’t know if it’s working.
Amil: Jackson, #MeToo movies have become a little bit of a mini-genre on their own. I’m thinking of Tár, starring Cate Blanchett, and Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, where do you think After the Hunt fits in in this milieu?
Jackson: I do think that this is definitely a #MeToo movie. Regardless of what Luca Guadagnino meant when he was making this, you can’t put aspects that clearly parallel the #MeToo movement and then say this isn’t a “#MeToo movie,” regardless of what your intentions were. Like, the ticking of the clock, you can’t have that in there and not know that people are going to make the associations with Time’s Up, et cetera. You can’t have a person in a position of power be accused of sexual assault against a student in their care and not have it be a “#MeToo movie.”
I think what they’re saying is that this isn’t an activist movie. This isn’t a movie that explicitly is trying to make a point about what that kind of culture, that power dynamic really means. And for that reason, I don’t necessarily think it’s exactly like Sorry, Baby, the movie that came out earlier this year, which told the exact same story, but from the perspective of the student.
I don’t necessarily think this movie is about the #MeToo movement and the assault in and of itself. It’s more about how self-interested we are under the veils of purity politics or morality plays. And I think it is very shallow and it doesn’t take a necessarily strong stance in showing both sides of that debate — of showing how everyone’s out for their own — both the older characters and the younger. But I do think that this is more similar to something like Eddington than it is to Sorry, Baby or to Tár or to The Hunt [the 2012 movie starring Mads Mikkelsen], et cetera, in that this is looking at the politics at play in community and pop culture at large, and reducing [it to] how small-minded and selfish everyone is.
You can listen to the full discussion from today’s show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Panel produced by Jean Kim.
