After the Hunt
Hedda
These days, more and more high-profile dramas never show up in theaters. If you blinked, you missed the one-week run of After the Hunt at the Capitol Showplace, though it stars Julia Roberts and was directed by Oscar nominee Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name). In October, the Vermont International Film Festival brought Burlington a screening of Nia DaCosta’s Hedda, a gorgeous new take on Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. But the film had regular engagements in just 10 theaters nationwide.
Granted, these are both dialogue-driven dramas about academic rivalry — not the easiest sells. But After the Hunt and Hedda also offer unusually juicy roles to their female leads, giving them a chance to be morally gray and complex while looking great doing it. That alone is sufficient reason to catch both films streaming on Prime Video.
After the Hunt was partially a victim of terrible timing. The plot turns on a questionable accusation of sexual assault at Yale University. Michelle Goldberg spoke for many when she opined in the New York Times that the premise feels like “a silly anachronism” in the context of “today’s right-wing crackdown” on the campus left, and she’s not wrong.
But After the Hunt isn’t as shallow or smug as such takes might suggest. Far from a messagey drama preaching a “both sides” philosophy, it’s a character study of one deeply flawed person: philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Roberts), who’s up for tenure at the same time as her friend Hank (Andrew Garfield).
Married to a therapist (Michael Stuhlbarg) who showers her with affection, Alma is privileged and imperturbable, her manner as glacial as her all-white ensembles. She’s an object of fascination to both the brash, flirty Hank — who comes from a more modest background — and wealthy, secretly insecure PhD student Maggie (Ayo Edebiri).
When Maggie tells Alma that Hank has assaulted her, we suspect more is going on — not because Nora Garrett’s script suggests that women are inherently untrustworthy, but because these particular characters are, Hank included. Maggie presents her accusation like a test: Will Alma take her side or Hank’s? Will she embody the ethics she teaches, or is she a fraud? The viewer already knows the answer, because we watch Alma hide her chronic pain, hoard pills and kiss Hank in a dive bar. Roberts is creepily convincing as a woman terrified someone will expose the messiness and self-hatred under her façade.
A chilly, visually impeccable film with few likable characters, After the Hunt drags on longer than it needs to. But Guadagnino nails the academic atmosphere — the hushed voices, the unspoken disdain. If you approach the film as an exploration of a deeply dysfunctional milieu rather than as a position statement, you may like it better than you expect.
Like After the Hunt, Hedda hinges on twisted psychological games, barbed dinner-party conversations, bravura female performances and costume design to die for. Where Roberts’ Alma is icy, however, Tessa Thompson’s Hedda is boiling over with energy and restless rage, so fearful of stagnation that she’s always spoiling for trouble. It’s a powerful diva turn that might remind you of Douglas Sirk, especially given the setting.
Director DaCosta (Candyman, The Marvels) also wrote the screenplay, which translates the Norwegian playwright’s 1891 drama to 1950s England with some notable alterations. As in the original, general’s daughter Hedda is newly and already unhappily married to scholar George Tesman (Tom Bateman). The couple have gone way into debt on a sumptuous house they won’t be able to pay off unless Tesman snags a professorship. But his one rival for the position — who just happens to be Hedda’s old flame — has reemerged from apparent disgrace to make a last stand.
In this version, Tesman’s rival and Hedda’s spurned lover is a woman: Eileen Lovborg, played by German powerhouse Nina Hoss (Phoenix, Tár) as a maverick lesbian intellectual battling both social prejudice and her own demons. The whole conflict plays out during a lavish party at the Tesmans’ new home, featuring electrifying live music, dancing, fireworks (literal and figurative) and far too many cocktails.
Eileen is newly sober, and Thea (Imogen Poots), her girlfriend and the coauthor of her brilliant new manuscript, hopes to keep her that way. But Thea’s mousy charms are no match for Hedda’s vamping — or her scheming. Hedda also has a penchant for shooting her dad’s old pistols, and we all know the chestnut about Chekhov’s (or Ibsen’s) gun.
Like Alma in After the Hunt, Hedda is no role model, and she’s especially vicious to other women. DaCosta’s gender switch renders men marginal to the action; they serve mainly to remind us of the social hierarchies that rein in the female characters. While Hedda may seem like a force of nature, her cruelty stems from boredom and her boredom from powerlessness to shape her own destiny, a feminist subtext that comes across clearly in both versions.
DaCosta has adapted the source material with care, weaving in new characters and updated concerns while keeping the dialogue sharp and period-appropriate. There are moments when the reimagining feels strained, but the dynamic camera work and jazzy score smooth over them. Overall, this Hedda stands beautifully on its own, requiring no familiarity with the original.
Thompson deserves to be an Oscar front-runner for her performance, which drips with the self-destructive glamour of icons such as Bette Davis. The women of Wicked may be getting all the attention this holiday weekend, but don’t write off these smaller dramas just because the industry has.
This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 2 2025.
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