Julia Roberts is used to press-tour pleasantries. What has surprised her during the weeks spent promoting her new drama, “After the Hunt,” is how eager journalists and audiences have been to debate what the film is really about.

“This movie has brought out a lot of really interesting questions and conversations in a way that is terribly pleasing,” she said. “My castmates and I were talking about how this is the only press junket we can remember where we’re not just like, ‘OK, here’s that question for the 24th time.’”

Directed by Luca Guadagnino, “After the Hunt” stars Roberts as Alma, a Yale philosophy professor who is revered by a coterie of confidants that includes her colleagues Hank (Andrew Garfield) and Kim (Chloë Sevigny), her student protégée, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), and her husband, Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg). But after Maggie accuses Hank of sexual assault, this tight-knit circle begins to unravel as Alma wrestles with the question of where her loyalty really lies.

Though the movie brushes against hot-button topics like cancel culture and #MeToo, Guadagnino (“Challengers,” “Call Me by Your Name”) never wanted “After the Hunt” to be received as a polemic.

“My idea was of an ambiguous movie that lets the audience think for themselves and make up their own minds,” he said.