luca guadagnino – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

AFTER THE HUNT – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

October 25, 2025October 25, 2025 Valerie Kalfrin After the Hunt, andrew garfield, ayo edebiri, chloe sevigny, julia roberts, luca guadagnino, Michael Stuhlbarg, Nora Garrett

Blond, poised, and enigmatic, Julia Roberts as an Ivy League professor draws the focus of After the Hunt, an academic potboiler that spends too much time on the radiant star instead of the character that sets the plot in motion. The drama explores the aftermath of a rape accusation that rocks one woman’s comfortable world. Yet its discussions of diversity, truth, and ethics end up feeling more superficial than probing, reduced to buzzwords like “the feminist generation gap” and “shallow cultural moment” instead of actual depth.

Reviews

AFTER THE HUNT – Review by Susan Granger

October 21, 2025October 23, 2025 Susan Granger After the Hunt, andrew garfield, ayo edebiri, chloe sevigny, julia roberts, luca guadagnino, Michael Stuhlbarg, Nora Garrett

Set on the Yale campus, Luca Guadagnino’s cryptic After the Hunt revolves around two professors – married to one another – and a grad student who claims she was sexually assaulted after she is accused of plagiarizing her doctoral dissertation on virtue ethics. That much is clear; the rest is decidedly murky.

Festivals Reviews

AFTER THE HUNT (NYFF 2025) – Review by Diane Carson

October 5, 2025October 11, 2025 Diane Carson After the Hunt, andrew garfield, ayo edebiri, chloe sevigny, julia roberts, luca guadagnino, Michael Stuhlbarg, NYFF 2025

Some films promise more than they deliver to the disappointment of those who welcome weighty issues decisively tackled. Director Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt qualifies with its exceptional cast, substantive conflicts, and high profile setting, all to no avail as the film chases after a clear presentation of characters awash in acrimonious crises. The jumbled ideas are as muddled as the relationships in a film with no semblance of constructive insight into the university world or its affected individuals. Promoted as a “twisty psychological thriller,” it is, more accurately, a confused, erratic indulgence.

Reviews

DICIANNOVE – Review by Diane Carson

August 26, 2025August 25, 2025 Diane Carson Diciannove, Giovanni Tortorici, italian films, luca guadagnino, Manfredi Marini, Massimiliano Kuveiller, Oscilloscope

Largely autobiographical and painfully honest, writer/director Giovanni Tortorici’s feature debut Diciannove rambles through 19-year-old Leonardo’s search for meaning, connection, and motivation. At times feeling almost as lost as its subject, to its credit the film does reject the conventional self-discovery scenarios so familiar in Hollywood’s dramatizations of teenagers’ introspection. Those egocentric interrogations usually lead to reassuring maturity after hard-won insights. Not for Leo.

Reviews

CHALLENGERS – Review by Susan Granger

December 18, 2024December 18, 2024 Susan Granger Challengers, josh o'connor, luca guadagnino, mgm, Mike Faist, Prime Video, tennis, zendaya

Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s emotional entanglement saga involving three tennis players is certainly one of the most challenging in recent memory. It begins as discontented top-ranked tennis pro Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) is nearing is 40th birthday and obviously tiring of the game, much to the distress of his ultra-competitive wife/coach Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). To restore his mojo, she urges him to enter a low-level Challenger tournament in New Rochelle, New York. What she doesn’t realize is that Donaldson’s long-time on-court rival, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) is one of the participants. Down-on-his-luck and so strapped for cash that he sleeps in his car, Zweig needs a win there in order to qualify for the U.S. Open.

Commentaries

CHALLENGERS: Love from the Tennis Movie Playbook – Jennifer Green comments

May 1, 2024May 5, 2024 Jennifer Green Challengers, josh o'connor, luca guadagnino, Mike Faist, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, tennis, tennis playbook, zendaya

The final climactic scenes of Luca Guadagnino’s new film Challengers track an epic court battle between two professional tennis players, Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor). The story follows them as childhood best friends coming up in the world of pro tennis whose relationship is complicated by their love for the same woman, frustrated tennis star Tashi (Zendaya). Their own obvious mutual attraction adds another level of homoerotic friction. You’d expect nothing less from the director of Call Me by My Name. But that doesn’t mean Challengers is entirely new as far as tennis movies go. In fact, the film pulls quite a few ideas from the existing tennis movie playbook.

Reviews

CHALLENGERS – Review by T. J. Callahan

April 24, 2024April 25, 2024 T. J. Callahan Challengers, josh o'connor, luca guadagnino, Mike Faist, tennis, zendaya

Director Luca Guadagnino, known for his wildly emotional, erotic and shocking films, has gone full soap opera as he serves up a tennis “love” triangle drama of the most steamy proportions with Challengers. Zendaya stars as Tashi, a teen tennis phenom. After suffering a career ending injury she turns to coaching her husband, a well known tennis champ on a losing streak. Tashi enters Art in a low level Challenger tournament to boost his confidence — until he finds himself in the finals pitted against his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend.

Reviews

CHALLENGERS – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

April 15, 2024April 15, 2024 Valerie Kalfrin Challengers, josh o'connor, luca guadagnino, Mike Faist, tennis, zendaya

Early in Challengers, Zendaya as a young tennis prodigy leans back on a motel bed, watching a situation unfold. Her smirk is both amused and aroused, turned on by her power more than her company. Director Luca Guadagnino’s hot and heavy sports drama pumps up the sensuality, with sweaty closeups of eyes, glistening torsos, and plenty of grunting—and that’s just on the tennis court. What the film mostly explores is a menage-a-trois—not the one hyped in the trailers but the complicated relationship of three competitive people who can’t stay out of each other’s business. Challengers offers a messy contest of wills and connections with a lot to unpack.

Reviews

BONES AND ALL – Review by T. J. Callahan

November 21, 2022November 27, 2022 T. J. Callahan luca guadagnino, Mark Rylance, taylor russell, timothee chalamet

Bones and All, based on a YA novel of the same name, stars Timothee Chalamet and Taylor Russell as the wayward young couple searching for who they are and who’s going to be their next meal. Character actor extraordinaire, Mark Rylance is Sully, a seasoned people-eater who’s
equal parts mentor and maniac. Director Luca Guadagnino mixes the bloody horror he orchestrated in Suspiria with the peachy romance from Call Me By Your Name as we follow the pair across the Midwest in stolen vehicles with stolen dreams.

Reviews

BONES AND ALL – Review by Diane Carson

November 21, 2022November 27, 2022 Diane Carson Bones and All, chloe sevigny, luca guadagnino, Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg, taylor russell, tellurde fim festival, timothee chalamet

Bones and All uses cannibalism to argue for compassion. Of the many truly terrific fifteen films I saw at the Telluride Film Festival this past year, Bones and All is the only film I can not wholeheartedly recommend. For it presents, with some reserve, cannibals, those who in fact are the living eating the living. And director Luca Guadagnino introduces it without holding back in an early scene.

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