"Luca Guadagnino misfires with this bafflingly overlong, overwrought #MeToo campus accusation drama from screenwriter Nora Garrett, broadly in the tradition of David Mamet's Oleanna or Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things. It is worryingly muddled and contrived, perhaps in need of further script drafts to excavate a clearer and more satisfying drama inside. Julia Roberts and Ayo Edebiri star, with Andrew Garfield and Michael Stuhlbarg"
"The movie is clenched with its own sense of contemporary relevance and risky blurred lines, saddled with an almost deafening score that often grinds straight through the dialogue; the drama becomes an atonal quartet of self-consciousness. One particularly weird and unearned mannerism is periodically introducing a pointlessly loud timebomb-style ticking on the soundtrack, something brought out in lieu of actual suspense but which never leads to anything as clear or interesting as an explosion."
An overlong, overwrought campus-accusation drama channels the traditions of David Mamet and Neil LaBute but fails to excavate a satisfying central conflict. The screenplay presents muddled and contrived plotting that reaches an inert, anticlimactic confrontation. Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield and Michael Stuhlbarg deliver committed performances that are hampered by unfocused characterisation. The film leans heavily on contemporary relevance and risky blurred lines while employing an intrusive, almost deafening score and a recurring, pointlessly loud timebomb-style ticking that substitutes for suspense. The production uses Yale locations, including the Beinecke library, and opens with an intertitle reading 'It happened at Yale.'
Read at www.theguardian.com
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