With 'After the Hunt,' Julia Roberts Gives Best Performance in Years

Let’s not bury the lede: “ After the Hunt ” gives Julia Roberts her best film role in at least 20 years. That’s both a big statement — two decades is a long time by any standard, an eternity in movie-star years — and fainter praise than it should be for a star of Roberts’ stature. In Luca Guadagnino ‘s charged, sure-to-be-debate-stirring moral drama, she gets to be, by turns, anguished and aloof, guarded and unhinged, intellectual and sensual, sexy and closed-off, a victim, a villain and an unreadable sphinx. In a film scene still tilted against substantial parts for older female actors, checking off just two of those conflicting notes would be a pretty good showing: Roberts’ latter-day filmography, in particular, has wanted for such range.

It’s the kind of tricky, prickly role that