Tue, 23 Sep 2025, 11:16 am
Feature

How masks and acne created new makeup trends

For many of us, face masks have become an essential part of everyday life thanks to the coronavirus. But regularly wearing one can have an unfortunate side-effect: mask-induced acne, aka

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India coronavirus: Online classes expose extent of digital divide

Mahima and Ananya are in the same class at a small private school in the northern Indian state of Punjab. Teachers describe them both as “brilliant” students, but ever since

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Coronavirus: The great contact-tracing apps mystery

Germany and Ireland have both trumpeted their success in rolling out contact-tracing apps.   But is there any evidence that they are doing what they are designed to do –

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Coronavirus face masks: Why men are less likely to wear masks

After much squabbling, Monica* took a drastic decision. Her husband Eduardo had repeatedly refused to wear a face mask as the Covid-19 pandemic grew in Brazil – the country with

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Coronavirus tests: Swabs don’t damage the brain and other claims fact-checked

Claims that coronavirus tests can harm people are circulating on social media. We investigated the claims in some of the most widely shared posts. The nose swab can’t damage the

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Coronavirus: Why attitudes to masks have changed around the world

In the past few days, both US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson have been seen wearing masks in public for the first time. It’s a dramatic

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Hagia Sophia . . . And the March of Illiberalism

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is being repudiated in Turkey. His concept of secularism, so meticulously and judiciously applied to his country in the 1920s, has been in a parlous state in

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Hagia Sophia . . . And the March of Illiberalism

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is being repudiated in Turkey. His concept of secularism, so meticulously and judiciously applied to his country in the 1920s, has been in a parlous state in

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The struggle to keep India’s Covid-19 patients breathing

In April, a sprawling hospital in a village in western India was directed to quickly set up an additional 200-bed ward for coronavirus patients. Infections were surging in Maharashtra state,

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Coronavirus: Is India the next global hotspot?

The coronavirus took hold slowly in India, but six months after its first confirmed infection it has overtaken Russia to record the world’s third largest caseload. With the world’s second-largest

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The megastar plays a philosophy professor shaken by a student’s sexual assault allegation against a colleague in Luca Guadagnino’s new film – and she’s easily the best thing about it. Julia Roberts doesn’t make many films these days. She was in Leave the World Behind in 2023; in 2022, there was her tropical romantic comedy with George Clooney, Ticket to Paradise; and then we have to jump all the way back to 2018 for her previous turn in Ben Is Back. But you can see why she chose to star in After the Hunt, a contentious campus drama directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Challengers). Roberts is on screen for almost every one of its 139 minutes, and she is the monumental centre around which its chaos and controversy swirl. It’s the kind of heavyweight role that gets awards nominations if it goes to the right person – and Roberts is definitely the right person. Her character is Alma, a philosophy professor at Yale University. Striding regally around its leafy quadrangles in a chic white suit that matches her blonde hair, this combatively intelligent alpha female is adored by everyone who knows her. Her husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is resigned to the fact that he loves her more than she loves him, and is willing to make whimsical jokes about the imbalance; Hank (Andrew Garfield), a would-be rebellious friend and colleague, is even more flirtatious with her than he is with everyone else; and her favourite PhD student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), worships her – which could explain why she is Alma’s favourite PhD student. It seems as if the status quo might soon be upset, though, as either Alma or Hank – or perhaps both – is expected to be granted permanent tenure. But then something far more drastic happens. The day after a boozy party in Alma and Frederik’s book-lined flat, Maggie tells Alma that Hank walked her home and then “crossed a line”. Alma is sympathetic – but only up to a point. There is no evidence of assault, so she isn’t sure whether to trust the word of a new friend over an old one, especially at such a critical moment in her career. And maybe, her thinking goes, lines were crossed at the party anyway, considering that teachers and students were hugging each other while knocking back expensive wine. “Roberts’ Alma is a coiled spring: her steely stillness makes her ferocity all the more powerful” It’s refreshing to see a grown-up Hollywood film that takes on contemporary issues: feminism, cancel culture, identity politics, and the generation gap. But After the Hunt is more of an admirable project than an engaging drama, because it never stops reminding you of how clever it wants to be. Guadagnino keeps showing off his quirky camera angles and intrusive music choices. The screenplay, by Nora Garrett, squeezes too much philosophical jargon into the dialogue, and too many tangential scenes and subplots into the structure. You might think that the alleged assault would be a big enough deal for any film, but Alma is given mysterious abdominal pains and guilty secrets, and Maggie is overloaded with significance as a queer, black, plagiarism-prone young woman with a non-binary partner and rich parents who are major donors to the university. In theory, viewers of After the Hunt should leave the cinema arguing about its subject matter. In practice, they’re more likely to be asking each other what was going on and what it meant. It’s all a bit much, basically. Garfield, miscast as a denim-clad dude who is, it is implied, roughly the same age as Roberts’ character, shouts and swears and waves his arms with a quantity-over-quality approach to acting. Stuhlbarg’s flouncing and sing-song delivery are presumably meant to be irritating, but perhaps not as irritating as they actually are. At the heart of it all, though, Roberts is a different matter. She understands that less can be more. Her Alma is a coiled spring: her steely stillness makes her ferocity all the more powerful and her pain all the more intense. Her muttering is scarier than Garfield’s yelling, and when she glares at someone, they stay glared at. It’s an expertly controlled performance which demonstrates why Roberts has been a Hollywood icon for so long, and why she could well be in line for her second Oscar, 25 years after Erin Brockovich. After the Hunt would have been better if everyone else involved had had some of that control, too.

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