In Luca Guadagnino’s new psychological thriller “After the Hunt,” Julia Roberts stars as a Yale professor who is forced to choose sides when a star pupil accuses another faculty member of sexual assault.
Each scene that unfolds is thorny and tense. And as the cast — including Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield who play the accuser and the accused, respectively — engage in an unflinching battle of wits, navigating one knotty maneuver after another, what stands out is their clothes, which are as sharp as the dialogue.
“After the Hunt” brings Guadagnino into more volatile territory as a filmmaker, but it has similarities to his past work in the visually rich sartorial choices of its cast, where the clothes contain deeper meaning and expresses the power dynamics between its characters. The result is made possible by the film’s costume designer Giulia Piersanti.
Whether teaching a class at the pristine Ivy League institution or grabbing a drink at a bar after hours, Roberts’ character Alma Imhoff has an unmistakable penchant for preppy, tailored cream-colored pieces, achieved with a wardrobe of luxury labels like The Row, Celine and Lemaire, though she also occasionally opts for vintage Ralph Lauren and L.L. Bean. And her style is mimicked throughout by Edebiri’s character Maggie Price (who wears clothes by young British designer Grace Wales Bonner, which is just as classy but not at the same extortionate price point). It is through these subtleties that viewers can deduce she has a yearning for Alma’s approval, and possibly more.
“I wanted to play around with the idea of the same type of looks but worn by different personalities and therefore with different styling and proportions,” said Piersanti in an interview with CNN in August from the Venice Film Festival, where the film premiered. “If you notice the women in the film, they all wear very similar items: blazers, button downs, it’s very academic. But Alma is the chicer contemporary version, while Maggie, who emulates Alma, wears a younger version of her looks.”
[Source: CNN]
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