Luca Guadagnino continues his winning streak with a tense, quick-witted drama on university cancel culture, with a luminous Julia Roberts performance at its centre.

Alma Imhoff is a star Yale professor verging on tenure, buoyed by her adoring top student Maggie and colleague/close friend Hank. When the two go home together one night, Maggie comes to Alma soon after with a serious accusation – which drops her into the middle of an excruciating, campus-wide battle of wills. Coming just off the awards success of Queer, Guadagnino tempers his lush creative vision for Nora Garrett’s screenplay, making a sharp, uncomfortably clear-eyed, and riveting character piece on an all-too-relevant issue. Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri give nuance and distinctness to their attacker/victim roles, but Roberts drives the film like never before, as the brilliant academic caught between loyalties.