Ayo Edibiri as Maggie (above) and Julia Roberts (below with Edibiri) as Alma in Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt.”

“It happened at Yale” is how Luca Guadagnino’s latest picture “After the Hunt” begins.

The sound of a clock ticks loudly for the first three minutes of the film as the camera follows Yale philosophy professor, Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts), go about her day on the storied campus and prepare for a dinner party hosted by her and her husband, Frederick (Michael Stuhlbarg). At this dinner party, another Yale philosophy professor, Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield), and PhD student and Alma’s protégé, Maggie Resnick (Ayo Edibiri), verbally spar about generational differences and safe spaces while munching on Frederick’s homemade tarts. At one point while drinking from crystal glasses, they discuss if philosophers like Heidegger, a member of the Nazi party, and Nietzsche, a misogynist, should be “canceled” due to their beliefs despite their contributions to the philosophical canon.

The discourse about problematic philosophers and ethics is set in a well-appointed living room in New Haven that looks plucked from a Ralph Lauren Home catalog. This is peak coastal elite almost to a disgusting degree. The conversation dominates the first 15 minutes of the film and is the catalyst for the events that follow. Hank, the flirtatious and roguish professor, offers to walk Maggie, a queer and transracial adoptee to billionaire donor parents, home. The following day Maggie tells Alma that Hank sexually assaulted her the previous night. Alma doesn’t react in a politically correct way based on her own questionable past and her shaky position being on the tenure track. Thus begins the meandering and too-long tale that weaves race, class, gender, ethics and wealth to make two points: no one in these circumstances is all good or all bad; and there are consequences for assuming guilt without due process and evidence.

“After the Hunt” has the potential to spark timely yet uncomfortable conversations about the complexities of sexual assault and cancel culture in higher education on a micro level and society writ large. The #MeToo movement rose to prominence in 2017. Eight years later it is time to reflect on the movement’s legacy and determine the ways it propelled its cause and the ways it created harm whether intentional or not.

Screenwriter Nora Garrett’s instinct to have Maggie, a black queer transracial adoptee, at the center of the assault is a useful tool to analyze how the threads of race, class, gender and identity weave together in a predominately white and elite institution through one character. However, the potential of this film is somewhat lost in a script that is too wrapped up in ivory tower pretension and risks losing the viewer’s interest in the characters and plot.

In one scene Alma introduces the concept of the panopticon by French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. The panopticon is a metaphor for the power and control institutions like schools and societies use to compel people to comply with norms through pervasive and invisible monitoring instead of force. As quickly as the metaphor is introduced it is forgotten. Sure, themes relating to the panopticon echo throughout the film, but its quick mention and subsequent disregard is a missed opportunity to make abstract yet relevant philosophical discussions and theories into concrete statements.

Edibiri’s layered performance as Maggie portrays a young woman who is out of her depth. To psychologically anchor herself amid a sea of contrasting identities (Black, woman, queer and wealthy) she can’t help but copy the mannerisms and stylings of whoever woman she admires at the moment. In this case it’s the enigmatic and brilliant Alma, played masterfully by Roberts.

Maggie dons androgynous color-blocked outfits, a wavy bob and brown nail polish just like Alma. Edibiri’s gestures and occasional rapid-line delivery as Maggie seems like she’s drowning at times, desperately looking for someone to save her from her alleged trauma and the mess that follows. Interestingly, this desperation is mirrored in Garfield’s engaging performance as self-proclaimed “desperate man” Hank, who describes himself as an Icarus who flew too close to the sun.

Although Maggie has wealth and pedigree to wield and weaponize in the aftermath of her assault given her “accidental privilege,” Edibiri chooses to embody Maggie’s blessing like a burden as the camera lingers on close-ups of her tense shoulders, fidgety hands and wide eyes constantly longing for a lifeline of safety and self-assuredness.

Yale’s motto is “Lux et veritas,” Latin for light and truth. Despite this, “After the Hunt” does not shy away from the reality that power is rarely light and the truth is hardly concrete. And prestige has more to do with optics than substance.

“After the Hunt” is playing now at Boston area theaters..

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