'After the Hunt' has its rewards

    Watching Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt, a movie about a purported sexual assault in a high-stakes academic arena, put me in mind of David Mamet's Oleanna, a 1994 movie that dealt with betrayal and accusations between a student and teacher in a college setting. Oleanna was delivered with sharp elbows. After the Hunt deals with similar issues but plays in a less insistent register.

   Mamet took aim at the staunch MeToo inflexibility.  Guadagnino tries a more tempered approach, leaving key questions unanswered and focusing on the way an incident of abuse plays out at Yale in 2019.

    Working from a screenplay by Nora Garrett, Guadagnino begins his movie with a dark screen and what sounds like the ticking of a clock, perhaps to suggest that the characters we'll meet are about to undergo a severe test. 

   Rather than turning his movie into a MeToo screed or a rant against cancel culture excesses, Guadagnino focuses on how the ambitions of his characters become enmeshed in circumstances over which they steadily lose control.

    After the Hunt centers its story on a Yale philosophy professor (Julia Roberts) who's on the verge of receiving tenure, the gold ring on the academic carousel. Roberts' Alma has a flirtatious buddy relationship with another professor (Andrew Garfield) who's also seeking tenure in the philosophy department.

   Alma's psychiatrist husband (Michael Stuhlbarg) seems like a vestige from a relationship that formed when Alma was immature enough to idolize him. The glow has worn off, but the relationship staggers on.

   Ayo Edebiri plays Maggie, the movie's most problematic character, a gay graduate student who sets off a campus firestorm when she accuses Garfield's Hank of crossing a sexual line.

   Is the ambitious Maggie -- who is suspected of having plagiarized her doctoral thesis -- telling the truth? Having pegged Maggie as a rising star, will Alma continue to support her or give her friend the benefit of the doubt? Do donations made by Maggie's wealthy family prevent the truth from being uncovered? And why did Alma single out Maggie for special attention in the first place?

   Roberts conveys flinty credibility as a scholar who has mastered academic speak while struggling with inner torment. Alma occasionally doubles over with stomach pain. She harbors a secret that, as the movie progresses, becomes easier to guess.

 Garfield does what might be his best work yet as a gregarious scholar whose affability could conceal predatory behavior, and Stuhlbarg ably plays a man who, when feeling pressed, expresses his anger in childish ways.

   Chloe Sevigny offers additional support as an academic who serves a guidance role with students and faculty alike, smoothing ruffled feathers and providing mental health counseling.

   Some of Guadagnino's scenes bristle with tension, and it's a pleasure to watch Roberts sink her teeth into a role. In one of the movie's strongest scenes, she eviscerates Maggie for being a spoiled child of privilege. In another memorable moment, she skewers one of her students deeply enough to scar the kid for life.

   It’s possible, though, that the movie overdoes things. Maggie, for example, is Black, gay, and super-privileged, a loaded deck of traits that supposedly grants her immunity in a DEI-dominated world. 

  Some of Guadagnino's choices seem like self-conscious strains to establish the film's intellectual bona fides. Ambiguities about the nature of truth might have been clear without references to the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's arty score can be both intriguing and jarring.

   Beyond all that, sexual abuse and cancel culture aren't exactly the freshest of subjects.

   Still, I got caught up in the way Guadagnino and his cast create the insular bubble in which academic power games are played. The movie's pleasures derive from the ways in which Guadagnino finds the  blood and bile that boil beneath a surface of academic refinement. I may be pushing the point, but After the Hunt sometimes felt as if a high-class helping of pulp somehow had gotten into Yale.

Another look at 'Bonjour Tristesse'

  In 1958, director Otto Preminger released Bonjour Tristesse, a film starring Jean Seberg, Deborah Kerr, and David Niven. I never saw that movie, but I've read that it received a better reception in France than in the U.S. 

   Now, the Francoise Sagan novel that inspired Preminger's film has attracted the attention of writer/director Durga Chew-Bose, who again travels to the Côte d'Azur for a story that embeds sharp psycho-sexual undercurrents in an atmosphere of soothing summer softness.

    The story centers on Cecile (Lily McInerny), an 18-year-old who seems to be gliding along nicely until she feels the need to meddle in her widowed father's relationships. 

    Claes Bang (The Square) portrays Raymond, a father who's spending the summer with Cecile and his girlfriend (Nailia Harzoune). He allows Cecile to flounder and make mistakes. He prefers not to give advice. 

    The trio’s emotional balance destabilizes when Anne (Chloe Sevigny) turns up. An assertive long-time friend of Raymond's late wife, she tries to manage Cecile, who seems to need guidance.

     The movie's conflicts sharpen when Anne and Raymond abruptly decide to marry. Cecile, who has her first sexual experience with a young law student (Aliocha Schneider), objects and schemes to derail the impending nuptials.

     Although the screenplay builds toward a tragic and provocative conclusion, the movie remains surprisingly placid. A story that may have seemed daring in the 1950s seldom feels charged with the fresh urgency you'd expect from a movie about a vacation stuffed with so much psychological baggage.

      Note: Sagan, who died at the age of 69 in 2004, was 18 when the novel was published. Note: This edition of Bonjour Tristesse isn’t a period piece; it’s set in the present.

‘Bones and All’ difficult to digest

    If you simply described the premise of Bones and All, a story about two cannibalistic teenagers trying to find their place in society, it might sound like an ordinary horror film with lots of coagulated blood and amped up tension. 

   In the hands of director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) the movie turns into something different, an indie-spirited accumulation of strange scenes that suggests deeper meanings, “suggest” being the operative word. 

   But suggesting and saying aren’t the same thing, and for most of it two-hour and 10-minute running time, I kept waiting for Bones and All to find something. I'm no sure what. Not some on-the-nose declaration of purpose but perhaps a door that swings open, inviting us to drop beneath the surface.

   Instead, Guadagnino suspends his movie in a low-rent limbo where nearly everything seems drab, unappealing and only potentially meaningful.

  Those looking for color will find it mostly in the blood that stains the faces of the movie’s young cannibals after they chow down.

   Without making too big a fuss about it, Guadagnino lets us know that the film, based on a YA novel by Camille DeAngelis,  is taking place during the ‘80s. Working phone booths. A TV repairman’s truck. (Yes, kids, people once had their TVs repaired). Music on the soundtrack. It's all from the '80s.

  In the film’s best performance, Taylor Russell portrays Maren, an 18-year-old cannibal kid who’s abandoned by her father (Andre Holland), a caring man no longer able to cope with his daughter’s proclivities. Every time she bites, they must uproot.

  Once dad is gone, Maren sets out on her own. Early in her journey, she encounters Sully, played by Mark Rylance with a vaguely southern accent, a long braid, and skin-crawling creepiness. Sully wants to teach Maren how to live as an “eater,” which is how those driven by irresistible flesh-eating urges refer to themselves. He also craves company.

  After wisely splitting from Sully, Maren meets Lee (Call Me By Your Name star, Timothee Chalamet), another “eater. 

   Unable to find niches in the “normal” world, the two travel around the country in Lee’s pick-up truck. During one encounter, they meet a couple of good-ole boys, also eaters (an unrecognizable Michael Stuhlbarg and David Gordon Green). 

  Stuhlbarg’s character explains the title. Ominously, he tells Maren and Lee that they won’t be full-fledged eaters until they consume a body “bones and all.”  

   There’s before bones & all and after, he says, signaling what I took to mean full and gleeful submission to one’s cannibal self. 

   Unlike the movie’s two main characters, these two are barbaric eaters. Or maybe they just don’t like leftovers.

  In another encounter, Maren meets her institutionalized mother (Chloe Sevigny), who presumably passed the macabre genetic heritage of “eating” to her daughter. Mom, by the way, had herself locked up so that she wouldn’t victimize anyone else. 

  The supporting cast fully embraces these whacky roles. Chalamet charts his own weird course.

  The movie attempts to redeem itself by showing that Maren and Lee don’t really want to be “eaters,” although they take different approaches to their unexplained  “affliction.” 

  Maren adopts a moral stance: She’d rather not kill. Lee says he has no choice. It’s not clear, though, whether Maren can choose to be a more acceptable kind of carnivore.

  Guadagnino doesn’t cop out on gore and those who are squeamish about such things should probably find another movie about two outsiders roaming a lonely, creepy world. 

   If you’re wondering whether Maren and Lee eat regular food, they do — at least until the need to feed on human flesh overcomes them. I guess the movie wants us to see them as a couple of kids desperately in need of connection. 

  The movie's saving grace, such as it is,  lies in Guadagnino’s understanding of the sadness of outcasts.

   And, yes, it takes talent to draw us into this bizarre world and accept (or at least adjust to) its terms, so much so that we forget to step outside and consider what we’re watching. 

   Should we do that, we might see Maren and Lee as needy kids who also happen to be killers who can’t control themselves. 

   When these kids get hungry someone dies. Just sayin’.

A road movie with a political theme

Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya create a memorable duo in Queen & Slim, a movie about a black couple that takes flight after the accidental shooting of a racist cop.

Jodie Turner-Smith brings tons of presence to the screen in Queen & Slim, a drama about a black man and woman who take to the road after they're involved in the accidental killing of a racist cop. Tall and lean, Turner-Smith isn't always behind the wheel but she drives the movie.

As the other half of the fleeing couple, Daniel Kaluuya, familiar from Get Out, has the less showy role. He plays a young man who finds himself mired in a situation that rapidly spins out of control. After the police shooting, Kaluuya's character naively tells Turner-Smith's character that he's not a criminal. You are now, she replies.

Maybe Kaluuya’s character needs to rethink his personalized license plate: It reads, "Trust God."

The two meet on the blind date that opens the movie, which unspools in ways that may remind you of other movies -- from Bonnie & Clyde to Thelma and Louise. But director Melina Matsoukas, working from a screenplay by Lena Waithe, isn't following the customary map. Queen & Slim is a road movie set against a backdrop of racially motivated injustice.

An episodic approach includes a stop in New Orleans where the couple seeks refuge with Turner-Smith's character's uncle (Bokeem Woodbine), a man who lives with several women. Bokeem's character has an improbable backstory that later comes to light.

A white Florida couple (Flea and Chloe Sevigny) adds a late-picture stop. They want to help the couple escape to Cuba where they hope to find safety.

Matsoukas, who directed Beyonce's Formation video, grounds the movie in black community support for the movie's two main characters. They inspire protests proclaiming the sanctity of black lives.

A major miscue involves the way Matsoukas juxtaposes a sex scene between the two protagonists and protests against police brutality.

There may be more going on here than one movie can handle, a story of mismatched love (she’s a no-nonsense attorney; he’s an ordinary guy), a traditional road movie, a cry of social protest and a movie with a taste for anecdotal side trips.

The points in Waithe's screenplay can be made bluntly, a defensible choice considering the subject matter but the movie piles a lot on its plate as it moves toward a finale that you'll probably anticipate before it arrives.

Queen & Slim doesn't always work. I'll say this, though: When shots are fired in Queen & Slim, they carry a violent, harrowing shock. That's more than you can say for lots of movies. This time, the violence is felt.

Jim Jarmusch makes his zombie movie

Every now and again, I come across a movie that I watch without being able to form much of a connection. That certainly was the case with The Dead Don't Die, director Jim Jarmusch's belated entry into the world of zombie movies. Employing a cast led by Bill Murray, Adam Driver, and Chloe Sevigny -- all of whom play small-town cops — Jarmusch deadpans his way through a dreary foray to a small town where the dead are popping up from their graves. There's little point making this kind of movie without taking aim at a decaying world. To that end, Steve Buscemi portrays a racist farmer who wears a "Keep America White Again" hat, a take on ... well ... you know. Strange things begin to happen in the tiny fictional town of Centerville and it doesn't take long for the dead to begin chewing on the living. Murray and Driver display little emotion as the movie progresses. Tilda Swinton adds to the weirdness quotient. She shows up as the town's mortician, a woman who also happens to wield a mean samurai sword. At one point, Jarmusch shatters convention. Driver's Ronnie justifies his gloomy outlook by telling Murray's character that he knows things will end badly because he’s read the script. Jim, he says, showed it to him. Oh, I forgot to mention that Tom Waits portrays a hermit who wanders through the woods outside of town and that Danny Glover appears as the owner of the town's hardware store. The idea of riffing on zombie movies, a deadened American culture, global warming, and small-town insularity isn't exactly new. Because The Dead Don't Die was selected as the opening offering of the Cannes Film Festival, I expected a more robust movie -- even if that movie kept faith with Jarmusch's low-key style. The Dead May Not Die, but this movie sometimes feels as if it's in need of life support. Oh well, maybe it’s me. I’ve admired some of Jarmusch’s movies and been unimpressed by others. For me, this one staggered its way onto the negative side of the ledger.

Why did Lizzie Borden wield her ax?

Directed by Craig William Macneill, Lizzie showcases the work of Chloe Sevigny as Lizzie Borden, the 19th century Massachusettes woman who purportedly killed her stepmother and father with an ax. Sevigny gives an unnerving performance in which her face can show either rigid determination or the unraveled fury of a woman who has unleashed a terrifying rage. Sevigny's Lizzie finds herself in the middle of a tale of repression so severe, only the most violent assertion can break its hold. Sevigny is aided by Kristen Stewart, who plays Bridget, a diffident Irish maid who works for the Borden family and who becomes Lizzie's lover. Jamey Sheridan exemplifies all the worst qualities of patriarchy; he portrays Andrew Borden, a man of punishing cruelties that may be intended to mask his own sexual desires. Fiona Shaw plays Lizzie's stepmother -- not quite wicked but acquiescent in her husband's sadism. Denis O'Hare portrays uncle John, an unscrupulous facilitator of Mr. Borden's business life. Slowly paced, Lizzie ultimately delivers the bloody goods with a naked Lizzie chopping her way into American criminal lore. Carefully appointed and photographed, Lizzie ultimately suffers from its one-note insistence on turning Lizzie into a warrior against patriarchy. The movie juxtaposes period-piece pacing with a contemporary reading of the Borden story. The mixture doesn't always work, but there's no denying Sivigny's commitment to the role; she cuts through the movie's lumbering pace with a bluntly expressed but towering rage.

Austen, manners and much amusement

Director Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Damsels in Distress) has taken Jane Austen's early, epistolary novel Lady Susan and turned it into an amusing trifle. I don't use the word "trifle" to demean Stillman's efforts, but to describe its level of amusement in a fair and, I hope, appealing way. Kate Beckinsale plays Lady Susan, a flirtatious widow with a reputation that challenges English notions of propriety. Among other things, Lady Susan preoccupies herself with finding a husband for her daughter (Morfydd Clark), a young woman who has been dismissed from a private school that Lady Susan can't afford. Lady Susan pushes her daughter toward a doltish, giggling fool of a man, Sir James Martin (a very amusing Tom Bennett). Smart and attractive, Lady Susan proves alluring to the men she encounters, notably young Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel) and older Lord Manwaring (Lochlainn O'Mearain), who happens to be married. The American Alicia Johnson (Chloe Sevigny) is Lady Susan's best friend. Stephen Fry has a tasty turn as Alicia's aging husband. Stillman is particularly good at allowing some of his characters to reveal their fatuousness. An example: When the giddy Sir James confronts a plate of peas for the first time, he can't resist describing them as "tiny green balls." Beckinsale's feisty, razor sharp turn holds everything together, and gives the movie its sting. Well-appointed and true to its period, the movie is nonetheless bouncy and amusing. Besides, what are Eighteenth Century drawing rooms for -- if not characters such as these.