Skilfully bumbling and very smart, The Invite explores both exaggerated and muted sexual relationships.
Washed-up musician and unsatisfied music teacher Joe enters his home, where wife Angela has just unrolled a new large rug to accompany her seemingly endless renovations of their San Francisco apartment. It grates on him, but everything Angela does grates on him. She’s fairly manic, while he’s likely depressive, and he’s not in any mood to entertain guests. Especially not the new couple from upstairs, Hawk and Pina, who have uncommonly loud sex, a topic Joe will definitely bring up at some point during the night. But Angela, desperate to impress them, is clearly anxious and demands he behave. When the couple arrive, they seem too perfect to be true, making Angela all the more nervous and Joe all the more annoyed. Hawk loves Angela’s eye for decoration. Pina’s impressed with Joe’s brash directness. Something’s maybe in the air. Despite the catering fail (Pina eats no meat, cheese or gluten, and Angela’s set out cheese, crackers and imitation jamon, and Joe missed Angela’s text to pick up wine), the foursome settle into a bit of weed and some tequila shots. This is when things turn lively.
The Invite is an intelligent comedy – sort of a riot, really – and highly reminiscent of Woody Allen’s New York relationship, dialogue-driven capers. Adapted from Cesc Gay’s Spanish film The People Upstairs (also adapted in France, Italy, Switzerland and South Korea) with screenplay credits to Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, the origin of the work lay in Gay’s stage play by the same name. There’s no holding back that it’s an obvious translation from stage to screen, and in a way it feels all the more successful for it, giving the characters room to really own the space. Olivia Wilde as Angela, Seth Rogen as Joe, Penélope Cruz as Pina and Edward Norton as Hawk are gifted incredibly inspired fodder for masterful comedic performances in this very modern sex romp, and not one can be faulted. Interestingly, Amy Adams, Paul Rudd and Tessa Thompson were originally cast, but the project stalled and a new ensemble, under Wilde’s direction, formed.
When Pina tells Angela that the apartment has great energy, and energy is something you can’t create or destroy, but something you can capture, she’s undoubtedly giving voice to metaphor, a commentary on the plot’s tension. But it’s also metaphor for what Wilde, as the director, has done with the film. Wilde is a rare triple threat in Hollywood: writer, actor and producer, and being a woman means she’s in a pretty exclusive club. As a director, she makes clever films that are highly entertaining and offbeat (Don’t Worry Darling, Booksmart), and The Invite is a delightful addition to her canon. To say, ‘She’s one to watch,’ demeans the fact that she’s been working for decades, but she doesn’t seem to be slowing down, and it makes sense to point her out to those who aren’t in the know.
The film is dedicated to Diane Keaton, another triple threat in Hollywood, and star of multiple Woody Allen films. In an Instagram post after Keaton’s death, Wilde wrote, ‘She told me to keep my heart open. She told me to direct. She told me to be brave.’ With The Invite, she did it all.
Reviewed by Heather Taylor-Johnson
Rating 4.5 out of 5
Distributor: A24
