Julia Roberts has been forced to defend her new film After the Hunt on Friday from claims it “undermines feminist principles” and “the feminist struggle.”
Speaking at a Q&A for the Venice International Film Festival alongside director Luca Guadagnino and co-stars Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, Michael Stuhlbarg, Nora Garrett, and Chloë Sevigny, Roberts said that “we’re kind of losing the art of conversation in humanity right now,” according to Variety.
A reporter had asked the star to respond to the critics who think the film cast a bad light on the #MeToo era.
“I think, not to be disagreeable, because it’s not in my nature,” she began, “I don’t necessarily think it’s reviving just an argument of women being pitted against each other or not supporting each other. There’s a lot of old arguments that get rejuvenated in this movie in a way that that does creates conversation.”
After the Hunt follows a college professor (Roberts) who navigates controversy after a star student (Edebiri) accuses her colleague (Garfield) of sexual assault.
The film’s events apparently rubbed some viewers the wrong way at the festival, based on reporter questions at Friday’s event.
Roberts insisted that the movie is meant to provoke a response from audiences.
“The best part of your question is you talking about how you all came out of the theater talking about it, and that’s how we wanted it to feel,” she also said, explaining that one of her hopes for the film was “that everybody comes out with all these different feelings and emotions and points of views and things that you realize what you believe in strongly.”
“Because we stir it all up for you. So, you’re welcome,” she added, getting a laugh out of the tense moment.
“We’re not making statements. We are portraying these people in this moment in time, and the camera has fallen from the sky in this particular moment and captures all this.”
Roberts herself has admittedly never been in the type of situation that #MeToo served to highlight. Around the height of the movement in 2017, she told Today that the slew of unearthed accusations was “all so ugly in so many ways.”
She added, “I’ve never had this experience. I mean, I almost feel bad saying that because I don’t know why I was spared. You hear some of these heart-wrenching, awful stories—and I have a daughter—it is heartbreaking. But it’s not been part of my experience.”
But in a time when society at large is grappling with the aftermath of the movement, the film’s handling of its central scenario was bound to get a strong reaction no matter which way it played out. Roberts insisted those reactions are what she hopes the film “challenges.”
“I don’t know about controversy, per se, but we are challenging people to have conversation, and to be excited or infuriated about it is up to you,” she said.
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