USA, 2026, thriller, director: Luca Guadagnino, starring: Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield.
The orderly life of a university professor begins to collapse when one of her close colleagues is accused of raping a student. Where is the line between solidarity with a colleague and moral duty? Our heroine will face a difficult ethical dilemma.
The story takes a complex turn with the racial dynamic at play, as the victim is a black girl and the professor is white, adding an extra layer of tension to the plot. What's really intriguing is how the main character grapples with her own biases and life experiences, which have shaped her beliefs over time, and how these influence her ability to objectively understand the tragedy. She's so invested in preserving her own comfortable world that it takes her a while to truly empathize with the pain of others. Moreover, her own past is marked by a traumatic experience that she still struggles to acknowledge as rape, which further complicates her emotional response to the situation. This inner conflict makes for a thought-provoking exploration of how our personal experiences and prejudices can affect our perceptions of the world around us. As the story unfolds, it's clear that the main character's journey is not just about understanding the tragedy, but also about confronting her own demons and learning to see beyond her own biases.
The way the story unfolds, it seems like the professor's silence makes her appear to be supporting the wrongdoer. To be honest, her behavior was just as frustrating as the rapist's actions. But as the story comes to a close, the main character goes through a lot of emotional turmoil and eventually starts to uunderstand that trying to justify the attacker's behavior by saying they're talented or complex is just a way of perpetuating injustice. The question is, will the main character finally be able to accept that there's no excuse for the rapist's actions, no matter what? It's like, can she finally see that some things are just wrong, no matter how you try to spin them? The whole thing is really about how we tend to make excuses for people who do bad things, and how that can be really harmful. So, it's interesting to see how the main character navigates this and whether she'll be able to come to a place of clarity and accountability.
