TL;DR
- Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt premiered at Venice Film Festival, starring Julia Roberts.
- Opening credits directly nod to Woody Allen, stirring controversy.
- Film tackles power, scandal, and truth through a #MeToo-inspired storyline.
- Roberts and Guadagnino defended the film, saying it’s about sparking conversation.
- The queer lens in Guadagnino’s work keeps LGBTQ audiences watching closely.
A Scandal Wrapped in Credits
Italian provocateur Luca Guadagnino has never been afraid to push buttons, but his latest feature After the Hunt—unveiled at the Venice Film Festival—comes with baggage the size of a Gucci trunk. Starring Julia Roberts as a Yale philosophy professor caught in the crossfire of scandal and accusation, the film quickly sparked chatter for more than just its storyline.
The opening credits—plain white Windsor font on a black screen—landed like a bombshell. That exact style, of course, belongs to Woody Allen, whose name has been synonymous with controversy ever since his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow accused him of sexual misconduct decades ago. Audiences at Venice didn’t need a detective to catch the reference, and Guadagnino seemed more than ready to talk about it.
“The crass answer would be, why not?” he told reporters when asked why he echoed Allen’s signature. He went on to wax nostalgic about Allen’s work between the mid-’80s and early ’90s, citing Crimes and Misdemeanors and Hannah and Her Sisters. To him, the nod was both a stylistic choice and a confrontation with the messy business of loving art by troubled artists. “It goes beyond Woody,” he added, framing the credits as both homage and provocation.
Julia Roberts Speaks Out
Roberts, regal in a velvet pantsuit, wasn’t about to let the controversy overshadow the heart of the film. “It’s not so much that we’re making a statement. We’re just sharing these lives for this moment, and then we want everyone to go away and talk to each other,” she said. For Roberts, the project isn’t about finger-pointing—it’s about conversation.
And conversation is precisely what the film provokes. With a storyline involving accusation, betrayal, and the fragility of truth, After the Hunt dives straight into the kind of intellectual and moral quagmires Guadagnino thrives in. Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri join Roberts in a tightly wound drama that refuses to tie things up neatly—because, let’s face it, life isn’t neat either.
Why Queer Audiences Care
Guadagnino has long been a darling of queer cinema, weaving themes of desire, morality, and identity into lush backdrops (Call Me by Your Name, anyone?). With After the Hunt, he’s once again asking audiences to question the power dynamics that govern our lives. For LGBTQ viewers, that means recognizing how narratives of accusation, truth, and power often mirror our own struggles for visibility and justice.
When Guadagnino says, “Everyone has their own truths,” it resonates far beyond academia. For queer communities, truth has historically been denied, distorted, or silenced. A film that insists on the clash of truths—even one wrapped in controversy—feels painfully relevant.
The Bottom Line
After the Hunt isn’t here to comfort anyone. It’s here to stir the pot, to spark conversation in cafés, classrooms, and Twitter threads alike. By invoking Allen, Guadagnino is forcing viewers to wrestle with art and artist, scandal and substance. Julia Roberts, meanwhile, delivers the kind of grounded performance that ensures the film won’t be dismissed as a cheap provocation.
When the lights went up in Venice, audiences were left unsettled—and that might just be the point. For queer audiences especially, After the Hunt isn’t just a film. It’s a reminder that our truths matter, even when they clash, and that conversation is still our sharpest weapon.