Luca Guadagnino on “After the Hunt”

0:00From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:14it's the treatment i'm elvis mitchell we can also hear the show at kcrw.com slash the treatment my guest director luca guandino is not afraid of controversy he leans into it because so often what he does is about the relationship between people who think they're predators and people who think they're prey and how slippery that relationship is. First of all, I should say the film is After the Hunt. It's always a pleasure to have you here. Thanks for doing this. I'm super happy to be here. Thank you. And I couldn't help but think about Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf from the very first scene. First of all, I'm very happy you say so and you're in a great, right track because that was a movie that I taught a lot.

0:50And in general, I taught a lot about Mike Nichols, the way in which Mike Nichols built the frame, built the movement of the actors, created the dynamics between the characters and directed the great movie stars. So the real lighthouse for me was a lot of thoughts on Mike Nichols. I mean, that's the way it's Andrew Garfield and Julie Roberts in that first scene. It's like watching Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in that scene, especially the way she's dressed in that scene, the way she inhabits that sofa. I mean, you're basically telling us that that character is a star in her own world. Yeah.

1:32And they are performing. Oh, my God. And that's the theater of their performances. And that's their life. In fact, the way they're set, it's theater in the round. The way they're surrounded by people around them who are like sort of paying attention to their own conversations without quite. They're basically, she's performed in her own living room for the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I could not think about that. They're so dazzling in conversation. We almost expect them to get applause. at the end of that scene. I think so. I think she's kind of commanding the gaze of everyone and she wants to have the moment in which after a monologue, everybody's going to say, wow, and applause.

2:07I agree with you. It's a theater. I think the house is a theater stage. Yell is a stage, you know. These people are all performing constantly their sense of self, their entitlement, their idea of privilege, their idea of prevailing over the others. and at the same time, unlikely great actors, they're lying all the time without knowing that they're lying. Great actor lies knowing they're lying. They are thinking they're right. We should say it's in the world of academia as is Who's the Fred of Virginia Woolf. It's about a secret that's exposed as we see in Who's the Fred of Virginia Woolf and another greater secret that exists under the secret.

2:47Again, there's so many layers that connect that for me, but also, I mean, the way that she's so often in white but with a dark jacket over the white uh the sort of so you're saying two things about her at once the way you're constantly showing us her shoes i mean there's so much about this that could be perceived as arch but is not uh and and i want to ask you about if you gave your actors time to rehearse because this sounds like that these characters are so lived in for them the movie came about quite quickly and from reading the script end of march 2024 to being shooting the movie spent we had like three months no no no more we started shooting in july but in those three months we did a lot julia roberts who is divine she was so warm and she said why don't you guys come to my house and in san francisco and we spent some time together reading the script standing up rehearsing it and so what I did I packed together with the the actors in their in the roles and and my my camera and costume design and makeup her team to do like a long period of time in San Francisco where we started by going through the script at Julia's home on her beautiful living room reading the script standing up interpreting the script changing it and mostly I would say And that was a great intuition that Julia had and that I try myself to achieve is to become friends, to make ourselves at ease with one another so that eventually once the movie actually started shooting, we didn't have to bother about this interaction being lived in because already we were living into these interactions.

4:32And then what we did, Malika, San Saeed and I, we tested the light. This incredible cinematographer that I convinced to come back to cinema after 25 years hiatus, he took for himself. We discussed a lot of the way in which we wanted this movie to look. And also with Giulia Piersanti, the costume designer, and Fernanda Perez and Massimo Gattabruzzi in makeup and hair. We really wanted to chisel these characters in a way that were iconic. They were dressed in a way that they're exposing their powers. and at the same time it's a sort of like armor and it's a code. So we did all of that way in advance.

5:09So once we got back to London, because we shot the movie entirely on stage in London and we built all the world of this movie on stage, everybody were very much acquainted with one another, knew the body language, knew the light, knew the spaces that they were going to live into. It's because it's funny, we talked before about some, one of the things that I like that what you do is oftentimes the dialogue doesn't matter and Michael Stolberg's character half of his performances grunts and laughs he's Julia Roberts' husband but we know who he is just by inflection and the way he inhabits a room and the way he comes in and out of a room and we can feel the history of that relationship and the two literally different worlds that she and her husband live in don't we?

5:53Totally totally you know in the script beautiful script by Nora Garrett who's also was an actor yeah And this is her first script. She described Frederick and Alma's apartment as a brownstone house. So it was a sort of verticality and narrowness to it. And I felt that we actually were going to be in the wrong path this way because these characters live in a way that, again, as I said before, they live on a stage and at the same time they pretend that we are all equal, but they are not. were not. And this kind of labyrinthine apartment that I thought about as a sort of like penthouse, a flat penthouse, in a way was more interesting because it was in a way a body that had all of these functions and all these little secrets and little corners of darkness where these people could hide the reality.

6:47And I think that Frederick and Alma are reflected in this apartment. You see in this apartment the history of this family, the heritage of high culture, the grandparents of Frederick came from Europe. In a way, the idea that art was a very progressive, humanistic tool of knowledge and then slowly, slowly became privileged. And so now they're into privilege, not any longer into what was the Great New Deal. No, it's Buddenbrooks, isn't it? In a way. I keep repeating the same movie over and over, which is a sort of fashion of Budenbrock, like I Am Love was a little bit like that. Portions of Budenbrock is reflected in Call Me By Your Name.

7:31And a bigger splash, certainly. It's definitely that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also, by the way, we should say we're talking about Thomas Mann with my guest Luca Guadagnino, whose new film is After the Hunt. It's the treatment. But also that sort of thing of a way of life vanishing before your eyes, which is very much Budenbrock. The entitlement is ending. This era of entitlement is ending. And the people don't know what to do with that. And just having that rug being pulled from beneath them is very much what this movie is about, isn't it? Totally, but also is about the consequences of all that and how time cure and covers everything.

8:08Because the title after The Hunt is, of course, about, for me, the last scene, five years later. I was thinking about the early scene from Suspiria, where Chloe Martz is having that confessional. and her therapist says, writes in her notes, she feels her constructed mythology is confirmed. Oh my God, Elvis, you make me shiver. Thank you. Wow, yes. Because that is very much what this movie is for me. I mean, I just flashed on it. And that line could almost be applied to every part that you've done. There's somebody who's constructed a mythology who's trying to live it out and by the end we see that that's not the case at all, isn't it?

8:49Absolutely. It's delusional, this constructed mythology. But at the same time, in this movie in particular, because desire doesn't play a great role other than the desire of prevailing over the others, this construction of self-mythologizing that brings people to destruction of self, it's unavoidable and continuous force so that leads everybody to reinvent themselves, which is very American, I would say. So that five years later, these characters have found a way to reinvent themselves and actually not coming to what they should have come, listening to one another. For me, that's the contrast in that first scene and the last scene.

9:28In that first scene, nobody's listening to anybody. Nobody. People are just talking. And that's why all the noise in the background doesn't make any difference because it's just more noise. That's why I wanted to tell you I love about the sound mix there. Craig Berkley, great sound mixer. That's incredible. That thing you often do early in your movies is you're saying there's no real difference between the noise in the background and what people are saying because often in your first scenes it's people talking at each other rather than talking to each other isn't it? True. I think this movie epitomizes that to the extreme consequences.

10:00Yeah, I think it's kind of in some way the apotheosis of that but also I think we were talking about again, people who think they're predators and have the comportment of that. yeah, I think they think they can have whatever they want. I think they can really like predators. That's a word that I didn't thought about, but in a way it's more about being apex, you know, like to want what you want and get it because you think you are entitled to get it. And eventually this delivers a total disconnection with one another. But there is hope. That is Frederick. Frederick is not a predator, neither he wants to be a prey.

10:40He's a loving man who is able to relentlessly love this woman, no matter what she does, no matter the flaws she performs, no matter the way in which she kind of give for granted his love. And eventually this kind of relentless love that he feels for her somehow wins over. It's interesting too, because almost as in screwball comedy, he's taken for granted, but he's the one who has real confidence. He's a sensualist. he eats he cooks he listens to music he's what these people all think they are i told julia fernando massimo frederick is the erotic character of this movie he is but he's completely in touch with his senses and his appetites in a way the others are not they all think that they're sensualists and they talk about the world in very sensual terms but he's someone who actually he's the continent man rather than the man of the continent yeah that's what i love about the character i mean because he's dressed in greys but he's the most vivid character i agree and i think that's again it's the way you use costume and also the way people sit the way people inhabit a room the way people are presumptuous with their touch uh we see so much of that in that first scene so by the people are touching and basically claiming territory rather than listening so that that's why that last thing when they're at a remove they're sitting across from each other is so powerful to me.

12:08In that moment, they're equal, finally, the two women. And they are still at war, but in a sort of like more considerate way. And they are ready to kind of give one another the element of recognition of their strength. We talked about this the last time you were here, which is almost 10 years ago now. But I was thinking also about in queer, just basically how touch is territorial for people, but doesn't really connote ownership because the people who are doing this presumptuous touching aren't really connecting the people they're touching. And that's the heartbreak of that first scene. It could almost have been a painting.

12:53It could have been a Renaissance painting. The position. Yes, absolutely. And how every position means a position of power. Completely. And how everybody has to stay in their position. We could talk almost about the first scene of the movie for the entire conversation, but I don't want to do that. We're going to take a break and talk about more of the film after the hunt with my guest Luca Guadagnino, who's been away for way too long. It's a new film starring Julia Roberts and Ayo Adebre, among others. It's the treatment. There's more to come. Stay with us. It's the treatment. And we're talking about after the hunt with its director, Luca Guadagnino, who's been away for the show for way too long.

13:28I was telling you there's a scene that's I think maybe my favorite of any you've done between Julia Roberts and the incredible Chloe Sevigny that could almost be seen out of crime and punishment with Russ Kelnick all sitting in front of his prosecutor. And it's also about the way power shifts in conversation, about how in the very little ways we sort of get to see Alma, Julia's character, her presumption about the world, how she owns the world, how she's talking down on this character who should be an equal. And I want you to talk about that scene because it's so beautifully directed. These women really play it beautifully.

14:05But it's also about the way power sort of manifests in your movies. There are different levels of powers in the scene, right? And that's set in this place called Three Sheets Bar, which is a real bar in Yale, where all these students and professors go mingling together. And we built this bar in Shepperton. We recreated and we recreated a sort of like picture of the place in 2019 when the story is set. So it's the exact replica. And we also realized that in one of those evenings, in that period of time, they were having a concert. So we also created in the background the image of people setting up a stage for a concert.

14:44I think that you have the power dynamic between Kim and Alma, where Kim... We say Kim is Chloe Sevigny. Kim is Chloe Sevigny, and Kim is there to tell Alma, Julia's character, listen, I know something happened, and I think you should be aware of that. And you should be wary of what you're doing. And at the same time, is Alma going after Kim and saying, you are breaching a pact between you and your student patient by being indiscreet about it. So again, another tug of war. But the invisible powers at play there, to me, is the institution, is Yale, is the idea that, and they briefly talk about it.

15:24These professors are a mechanism within the larger scheme of things that is higher education that slowly has become a sort of ground for ultra sensitive youth. and that it is also the place where probably the dynamic of education, which was a certain kind of until a certain period of time, has changed and shifted and the shift of power has become such that there is not such a firm ground for anybody, students and professors. So that's the invisible energy you see in the scene, I would say. Yeah, and the idea of a classic arts education now being part of an institutional business as much as anything else.

16:13I mean, it's really not about pushing back the walls of ignorance, which is why a character like Ayo, a Debrey's character, could get away with what she gets away with because nobody takes her seriously because she's just, for them, just another pawn to be moved until the next wave of students comes in. And there is a scene when Maggie gets very, very upset from the presence of Hank in the college, in the premises of the classroom. She runs away and she gets into the quad and finally Alma goes to consult her and they hug. And during this very nurturing hug for Maggie, Maggie meets this proximity with Alma, she raises her gaze because she feels somebody is looking at her.

16:52And what is looking at her is actual statue of Yale founder who is giving her the most scary look, like a sort of like inhuman look of the institution. It's that question of ownership. Dispossession. which is so much also a part of what you do too. People feel that they own other people and not acknowledging the purchase, the power, the humanity of the being in front of them. I mean, I want to ask you, because to me, that's the fundamental question. Where does that come from for you, people not being seen in your work? Because it's so often there thematically. I don't know. I think I grew up as a person always out of place and out of time.

17:40I was born seven months, so I didn't complete my time in the womb with my mother. So I had been in an incubator for two months before finally being released. So when you are in, I guess, when you are in an incubator, you already start your life by thinking, okay, I'm off. Then I moved from Italy straight to Ethiopia, where I grew up for five and a half years. And in Ethiopia, I've been in the mix of different levels of society, whether it was the expatriate living there, the Italians living there, the Italians mingling with the British living there, and the Italians and the British living with the Ethiopians there.

18:22Then there was this rupture that was the fall of the Lesser Assier Empire, followed by the coup d 'etat by Mengistu. First of all, there were the beautiful protests of the students that have been, of course, used as a pawn by the Benghisto gang. Then we had to leave. And then from Africa, where I was growing up with a mother who was Algerian and a father who was Italian, I went on to Palermo and I never really belonged. It's very interesting. So I have a very natural sense of displacement and not to belong. So I guess this comes from me. But there's also this sense that as you're certainly walking us through the politics of Ethiopia, which were about people trying to sort of take possession of themselves.

19:06Yeah. And that's shifting almost continually over the course of that period you were there. And even before. You know, Elvis, I did this movie called Italian Unconscious. I don't know if you've seen it. No. And I will make sure that you get a link. Please. It's a movie that I made because I've been offered to get into the archives of Italian, a national archive of moving images. and I knew that they had almost like locked hours and hours of footage of the horrible colonialist adventure of the fascists in Ethiopia back in the 30s. As you know, we've been very distinctive as Italians into using the worst way of colonialism and war.

19:49We've been always very ahead of everybody. like, you know, Italians used nervin gas on population and all of this. And this footage I had and I utilized. So I made this movie called Italian Unconscious where the first part is six interviews with great historians, philosophers of the politics about what it means, the undercurrent, constant nature of the fascism through Italian society. That colonial adventure that was not successful because as we know, I see a one-over. And then, what is an image? And what is an image of propaganda? The second part, I used all these images, and I turned them from propaganda images into true teller images.

20:33So you should see that. The person who really wants to feel things and who actually wants to be like Alma's husband is Hank, who can't. I mean, he's so trapped in that institution you're talking about. He's so much kind of a tool of that that he can't free himself from it. Yeah, yeah. And he's trapped into this mythology of the self-man-made. Yes, yeah. And also he's excluded by the elite because he's a self-man-made. But he's also, I mean, it's the costume of the working class. He's wearing a denim work shirt. He wears that same sort of, just like everybody else, I'm a working man outfit. That's as much performative as any of the costumes anybody else is wearing.

21:15Agreed. My guest who's agreeing with me a lot more than usual is Luca Guadagnino. His new film as director is After the Hunt. It's the treatment. But I also want to talk to you about the shame that we see Hank feel because it's almost, he's embarrassed to have been called out because it's, that's the moment where delusion disappears and he realizes the way people think about him. It feels like that, that Andrew Garfield almost instructed the entire performance coming to that moment. Here's a moment with Alma's character. I don't want to give away where they are because it's almost about him being in hiding but in that way the movie feels very catholic to me because i feel his shame in the way i've never felt anybody well i know what you mean and i can see that shame in a specific shot in that apartment when he realizes that he he's naked in his own truth in front of her and he has to leave the room in shame again because i find myself thinking again about who's afraid of virginia wolf and it's it's but it's also about the way you shoot these people io and and Julia and Antoine, you shoot them like movie stars.

22:19There's a kind of an inner glow that you use a camera, what Malik does to sort of capture in that. I guess I was thinking about Ferragamo too because it's just kind of about that kind of glamour in old school cinematography that I see in this. Well, we thought a lot about Gordon Willis and Svennik Weiss, me and Malik, and so we really looked for that kind of gilded light. And I love my actors, so I love the idea to make them be iconic. I mean, they are iconic in their own ways, but also the characters become iconic. It's funny you say Nyquist, because I was finally thinking about Fanny and Alexander also in that scene.

22:56Which goes back to the Budenbrook. Yes. Because it's inescapable. But also that sort of sense of kind of visual warmth that's really not there once we get to spend more time with these characters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is the intersection of Gordon Willis, who shot these kind of dark interiors. and it makes sense that he would be kind of a touchdown for you these dark interiors that were full of paranoia and and and that's finally what we get to i mean there's a scene where maggie goes to that bathroom which could be a scene out of the parallax view love thank you also she's on the floor which is a position that alma will find herself in on being on floors i mean there's so much you do that ends up like being these visual references that echo throughout the movie.

23:44I think that's mostly the kind of like observation I put in motion when I start making a movie on the way in which I see the behavior of these characters and then things become very intuitive and unconscious. But now that you say to me, I realize that there is a lot happening on the floor in this movie. Yes. People have to touch the ground. Yeah, yeah. Because they're kind of, they think they're above things, so they have to come down. Yeah, they have to go to the bottom. To raise up again. People coming down to the bottom, that's when they're kind of, for me, we really feel the anxiety and the paranoia is when they're coming down like that.

24:20But that's unconscious for you in this case? I think I realized all these connections in a way that I feel it's precise. But when you start putting, you know, like a chess piece in a place, then you realize that the other one has to go there and there. It's unconscious and intuitive, but it's really within the boundaries of the creative process of the movie itself. Yeah, because I just wonder... It's very organic. Oh, it is organic. So I want to ask you how much of this was deliberate, how much would you work out in visual terms? I look at the actors playing in the setup. For me, I gave myself the privilege of having these amazing sets, this great lighting, a lot of research.

25:03So we knew everything about the world of these people and the inner lives of these people and the motivations of these people and the background of these people. So we knew a lot. So once we have all this and you have these incredible actors, incredible, it becomes fluid. Sometimes, like Challengers, I like to be dominating the visual language in advance, so I storyboard everything. Depends on the movie. Because, I mean, it can't be organic. That very last game in Challengers, that had to be all worked out, didn't it? That was really a process. I got this amazing tennis double that were playing for me, the points.

25:44So first of all, I had to learn the tennis. Then I had to learn the actual point system and the body language of it and how the hand has to be and all of this. and that was months and months of work. Then when I realized all of that, then I had to understand what every dynamic, visual dynamic, every body movement meant in the greater picture of this movie and what I thought the movie was about. So I started to flesh this out and I started to draw images and then I started to kind of like discard what I didn't need and go to the point of what I needed and then we shot exactly what was drew and we edited exactly how it was drawn.

26:24Because one of the things I think I really admire about your work and we just sort of explicated with challenges that happens here is you mirror your first scene with a last scene. The last scene is often about an education that somebody didn't have. We have to go through the entire movie to see what it is they learned. I like that. I mean, that can't be organic. That has to be something that's engineered, isn't it? Oh, yeah, of course. But I think it's important that you leave life and the door to reality open on set. Because if everything is totally calculated, and there are many movies that are made like that, it's admirable, and it's very kind of like impressive.

27:06But at the same time, it becomes sterile. And I fear sterility. I don't want that. It's amazing that we're out of time already, but we're out of time. You got to come back in less than 10 years if you don't mind. I will be back as soon as you want me. My guest is Luca Guadagnino again, who's agreeing with me. So thank goodness. I am totally agreeing with you, yes. So thank goodness we recorded that. His newest movie as director is After the Hunt. Again, thank you for doing this. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's a terrible love when I'm walking with spiders. It's a terrible love when I'm walking in.

27:45Director Luca Guadagnino's films have been star-filled affairs. After the Hunt, his newest drama is no exception. It stars Julia Roberts, Ayo Adebari, and Andrew Garfield. Stars from all walks of life. Hear them at the archive. KCRW.com slash the treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. There's more to come. It's a terrible love when I'm walking with spiders. It's a terrible love when I'm walking there It's a terrible love when I'm walking with spiders It's a terrible love when I'm walking there It's The Treatment. You can also hear the show at kcrw.com slash the treatment. My guest is an actor, but as a documentarian, he makes films about intimacy and our relationship to the culture.

28:43He's done that with his terrific documentary on Tower Records. His newest film is I Like Me. It's the story of the late, great John Candy. Of course, we're talking to our old friend who hasn't been in here way too long, Colin Hanks. It's so good to see you, man. It's really good to see you too, Al. As we were talking before we got started, is what an expressive actor he was. And he had the most expressive giggle. I mean, there was so much in that laugh. What was it that you first responded to about him as a performer? What do you remember? I just remembered his presence, you know. Because you knew him.