Optics vs Substance: After The Hunt’s Commentary on Relationships in the Modern Sphere

Luca Guadagnino has built a career on telling stories about unconventional relationships. Challengers (2024) tells the story of an intense love triangle set against the world of tennis. Call Me By Your Name explores the complexities of forbidden love in an intolerant society. His newest film, After the Hunt (2024), explores unorthodox relationships in academia. While these films differ significantly in their storytelling and settings, they share a common purpose. Throughout his work, Guadagnino treats relationship dynamics as vessels for expressing primal human instincts. Guadagnino expertly uses the "relationship" as a site of subconscious self-discovery, a commentary on the exploration of genuine human desire. And After the Hunt is no exception. In this film, Guadagnino explores how the superficiality of modern society distorts the concept of relationships, transforming them into something unhealthy, driven by the ultimate goal of survival. He does so by highlighting three specific iterations of toxicity: obsession, security, and forbidden desire.

Alma Ighof, played by Julia Roberts, is a philosophy professor at Yale whose past trauma has left her cold and dismissive—even toward the relationships she claims to value most. Her relationship with one of her PhD students, Maggie Resnick—or rather, Maggie's relationship with her—reflects the first type of unhealthy dynamic: obsession. Throughout the film, Maggie's fixation on Alma grows to the point of imitation. She straightens her hair like Alma's, dresses like her, and even wears jewelry to resemble her. The attachment often appears maternal as Maggie seeks Alma's approval and guidance on major life decisions. When Maggie claims to have been assaulted by one of Alma's colleagues and former lovers, Hank Gibson, she turns to Alma for advice. In that scene, Alma finds Maggie drenched from the rain and curled almost in a fetal position in her foyer, which serves as a visual echo of the mother-daughter undertones that initially make their relationship appear nurturing. Yet Maggie's obsession is revealed when she continues to seek Alma's help in going to court against Hank, despite Alma's repeated coldness.

Alma urges Maggie to remain silent, warning her that when women speak out against powerful men, the backlash can destroy them. Maggie is torn between speaking up and preserving her career. Rejected by Alma, Maggie's motives shift toward revenge. She is motivated to speak out not only to expose her assault but also to bring down Alma's reputation by exposing her lack of support for Maggie. Through this obsessive revenge, Guadagnino exposes how people use obsession as a tool to fulfill their intrinsic need for acknowledgment and recognition in order to survive in modern society. He criticizes how modern society has begun to normalize toxic dependency as a way to survive.

Distinctly, Alma's relationship with her husband, Frederick, represents a different kind of dysfunction: secure but unrequited love. Married for years, Frederick is steady and devoted; he knows Alma and can always anticipate her emotions. However, Alma does not love him, and he accepts that. In fact, near the end of the film, when Alma collapses, she confesses to Frederick a long-buried trauma about a past "lover" — without the fear of losing him — demonstrating her awareness of the security her marriage gives her. Alma recognizes and capitalizes on Frederick's reliability, but her love remains hollow.

Alma consciously uses her husband to provide comfort and safety amid the film's commotion. This form of parasitism functions as a vessel for Alma to fulfill her primal psychological need for security and stability in order to survive in such a cacophonous and ever-changing world. Guadagnino uses this parasitic relationship to comment on another form of modern relational dysfunction—one built on comfort rather than genuine connection with the sole need of staying alive.

In contrast, Alma's relationship with Hank represents the forbidden and dangerous. Their relationship reflects the survivalist desire for sexual fulfillment. Hank is passionate, impulsive, and morally complex, and Alma uses him to satisfy her needs and to feel the passion she lacks in her marriage. When Maggie accuses him of assault, Alma finds herself torn—she trusts Maggie but also loves Hank and believes him incapable of such violence. Their relationship captures yet another modern dynamic: forbidden desire through the passionate affair. Alma's affection for Hank is clearly strong enough to lead her to lack confidence in backing Maggie, and Hank's affection for Alma is very evident throughout the film, both in big gestures and nuanced details. Although Alma is married, she remains involved with Hank because of the satisfaction he provides.

While Alma's trauma drives her to protect herself emotionally, choosing to believe Maggie rather than risk exposing her own secrets, it is still clear that her time spent with Hank was real and vital to her as a person. Even after Hank is fired, he shows up at Alma's secret apartment and begs her to confess her love for him, knowing she reciprocates his feelings. The film conveys her intense adoration for him, thereby showing that Alma needed this relationship to fulfill a basic human need for fulfillment.

Ultimately, After the Hunt presents a philosophical conundrum where right and wrong blur, and every character operates in shades of gray. Guadagnino uses these flawed relationships to critique how the superficiality and moral performativity of modern society have warped our understanding of intimacy, desire, and accountability. Through Alma, Maggie, Frederick, and Hank, Guadagnino reminds us that the modern relationship, once a vessel for discovery, has become a mirror reflecting our collective confusion about what it truly means to connect.