Venice (AFP) - Julia Roberts said she hoped to “stir it all up” for viewers of her new film about a university professor grappling with fraught US campus politics, as the Hollywood star made her debut at the Venice Film Festival on Friday.

The star walked the red carpet at the city’s festival for the first time in her career at the premiere of “After the Hunt”, a cancel-culture and MeToo-themed psychological drama from Italian director Luca Guadagnino.

Early reviews could make difficult reading for the “Pretty Woman” actress, however. The Hollywood Reporter wondering how Guadagnino “could deliver something so dour and airless”.

While Variety praised Roberts’s performance, it nevertheless described the film as “muddled”.

Roberts, speaking at a news conference Friday ahead of the premiere, said the film did not aim to answer questions, but provoke them.

She plays a Yale University professor haunted by a secret from her past after a student accuses one of her colleagues of sexual assault.

Questions over truth and fiction, and whether characters are reliable narrators, course through the film.

Touching on Gen Z culture and the generational divide between students and professors, the Amazon-produced film has overtones of Todd Field’s 2022 drama “Tar”, which earned Cate Blanchett a best actress award at Venice.

“Not everything is supposed to make you comfortable,” Roberts’s character in the film tells the student who claims she was assaulted.

- A challenge to conversation -

Roberts said the film did not advocate any one point of view.

“We are challenging people to have conversations and to be excited by that or to be infuriated by that, it’s up to you,” she said.

“We are kind of losing the art of conversation in humanity right now and if making this movie does anything, getting everybody to talk to each other is the most exciting thing I feel we could accomplish.”

Guadagnino is a Venice regular.

His 2017 “Call Me By Your Name” helped launch Timothee Chalamet to stardom.

And he was back in Venice’s main competition last year with “Queer”, an adaptation of the William Burroughs novel, starring Daniel Craig.

- Offing the competition -

Friday, the festival’s third day, also saw the return to Venice after 20 years for Park Chan-wook, South Korea’s master of black comedy, with his new feature, “No Other Choice”.

It is one of 21 films in the main competition for Venice’s top award, the Golden Lion.

Howls of laughter filled the theatre at an early press screening for the thriller-comedy.

It tells the story of a loyal paper company employee with a devoted family.

“I’ve got it all,” says protagonist Man-su (played by Lee Byung-hun) at the movie’s start – before everything goes terribly wrong.

After he gets laid off, he decides to kill off any potential rivals for a new job.

It was a critique of modern capitalism that underscores the comedy is universal, Park told journalists.

“Anyone who is out there trying to make a living in the current modern capitalist society, we all harbour that deep fear of employment insecurity,” he said.

The acclaimed director was last in Venice in 2005 with “Lady Vengeance”, part of a trilogy exploring the dark recesses of the human experience.

- Early contenders -

The two strongest early contenders for the Golden Lion include opening night feature “La Grazia” by Italy’s Paolo Sorrentino about an Italian president grappling with indecision about euthanasia.

Thursday brought the return of Oscar-winner Emma Stone in Yorgos Lanthimos’s darkly satirical “Bugonia”, about two conspiracy-obsessed misfits who kidnap a pharmaceutical company CEO.

Stone and Greek director Lanthimos, collaborating on a fifth production, are hoping to repeat their successful formula from 2023 when “Poor Things” won Venice’s top Golden Lion prize.

Variety called Bugonia “riveting”, saying Lanthimos was “at the top of his visionary nihilistic game”. Time magazine said Stone could “do no wrong”.

George Clooney’s turn as an ageing Hollywood star struggling with his career choices in Netflix-produced “Jay Kelly” by Noah Baumbach drew less favourable reviews.

The Guardian called it “a dire, sentimental and self-indulgent film”.

Another keenly awaited film, to be shown Sunday, is Olivier Assayas’s “The Wizard of the Kremlin”, in which British star Jude Law portrays Russian President Vladimir Putin during his ascent to power.

A film about the war in Gaza, “The Voice of Hind Rajab”, by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, has attracted heavyweight Hollywood attention and will premiere next week.

The festival, which has become a crucial launching pad for major international productions that have gone on to Oscar success, runs until September 6.