Luca Guadagnino falters with this bafflingly long and over-the-top #MeToo college drama from screenwriter Nora Garrett, which follows in the footsteps of David Mamet's Oleanna or Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things. It's worryingly confusing and contrived, and perhaps needs further drafts to develop into a clearer and more satisfying drama.
Julia Roberts and Ayo Edebiri star in the film, with Andrew Garfield and Michael Stuhlbarg in supporting roles; all give their best, though they are hampered by the unfocused and uncertain characterization of the material itself, which, by the time it finally reaches its confrontational coda, feels almost strangely inert, anticlimactic, and incoherent.
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Writer: Nora Garrett
Stars: Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield
The film is steeped in its own contemporary relevance and risky blurred lines, with an almost deafening soundtrack that often spills over into the dialogue; the drama becomes an atonal quartet of self-consciousness. A particularly odd and undeserved mannerism is the periodic introduction of an absurdly loud ticking sound, like a ticking time bomb, into the soundtrack—something presented in place of actual suspense, but which never leads to anything as clear or interesting as an explosion.
The scene takes place at Yale University, and the action is preceded by an intertitle announcing "It Happened at Yale...", perhaps hinting at some specific true story. Evidently, Guadagnino had permission to film at Yale itself, showcasing locations such as the iconic Beinecke Library, so Yale seems to have been somewhat compliant with the film. Roberts plays Alma Imhoff, a brilliant and charismatic philosophy professor, a tireless advocate for feminist rights, idolized by her star student Maggie Price (Edebiri), whose parents are wealthy enough to make numerous donations.
But some people, including her psychoanalyst husband Frederik (Stuhlbarg), whose behavior oscillates strangely between sweetly indulgent support and petulant complaining, believe Alma has been indecently flattered by an infatuated student from a wealthy family. Meanwhile, Alma aspires to tenure, competing with her flirtatious colleague Hank (Garfield), who is a close friend but perhaps wants to be more than that.
After a boozy, risqué, and cigarette-fueled party in an enclosed space hosted by Alma and Frederik, Maggie is escorted back to her student accommodation by a visibly drunk Hank. Hours later, he reappears at Alma's door with a terrible accusation, which Hank denies. Alma must decide where her loyalties lie in this intersectional crisis.
But the painstakingly cultivated ambiguity and complexity devolve into a tangle of evasive and elusive ideas, and Alma's health problems and the strange discovery that seems to set the action in motion appear highly contrived. And the scene in which Roberts beats up an irritatingly progressive student in class doesn't have half the impact of Cate Blanchett's imperious conductor doing the same thing in Todd Field's Tár. It needed some of Yale's classical rigor.
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