The review contains spoilers.
After a back-and-forth discussion between my friend and me regarding our ideal timelines for weddings and children, we sat down in a small theater to embark on a claustrophobic investigation of love and unhappy marriages.
Throughout our watch of “The Invite,” we found ourselves almost always giggling, sometimes because of absurd humor and clichés but mostly thanks to a good kind of discomfort.
The nearly two-hour-long film, directed by Olivia Wilde, is based on Cesc Gay’s 2020 Spanish film adaptation of his own play, “The People Upstairs.” In many ways, the screenplay’s theatrical inspiration is abundant, as the entire movie takes place in a well-curated apartment mirroring the play.
“The Invite” focuses on a couple, Angela (Wilde) and Joe (Seth Rogen), who are stuck in painful mundanity and have learned exactly how to get under each other’s skins. They are in desperate need of a shock to their system when Angela offers to host the loudly sensual upstairs neighbors, Piña (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton). The night takes a turn when Angela and Joe realize that their noise is the result of some R-rated parties.
The film flourishes as it switches from comedy to drama. The actors shine in an entirely unique way, each finding their own tone as the plot flows from one tension to another.
Norton fills Hawk with a certain annoyance only found in men who own one too many rugs, while Wilde establishes Angela as a millennial wife with a brain for miles who is desperate to seem cool. Cruz’s Piña embodies an enigmatic sexologist deeply in tune with love and the body.
However, the undeniable star in terms of performance is Rogen, with his take on a deeply insecure man masking his self-doubt with pointed jokes. In each delivery, Rogen slowly but surely drives home Joe’s identity as a man who once was with the best girl and now feels unloved by her.
An experimental take on non-monogamy, marriage, sexuality and love, “The Invite” reaches for something really interesting, but falls just short. Wilde and scriptwriters Will McCormack and Rashida Jones fell victim to the Achilles’ heel of many filmmakers: the cliché. Wilde’s stylistic signatures decrease her creativity as she returns to overused techniques like the classic mirror shot to capture the actors.
Similarly, the script loses so much of the discomfort and boundary-pushing that made it compelling as the movie reaches its second act. The film moves from driving, subtle dialogue to therapy-style shooting and a script reminiscent of the hit reality show “Couples Therapy.”
The movie ends the same way it began, with Angela and Joe playing piano together after a heated conversation over the cruelty they show each other. While I love a good bookend, I felt something more interesting could have been done to reflect the couple’s desire to explore and change.
While not a perfect film, “The Invite” certainly revived my faith in Wilde as a director, which was much needed after her unsatisfactory attempt at “Don’t Worry, Darling.”
In a time when sets and scripts are just getting bigger, like in Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” coming out Friday, “The Invite” attempts something nearly as difficult: keeping it small. It is quite the feat to stick to one set with four actors in a dialogue-driven film. While I doubt it’ll be the best film of the year, I was impressed and delighted to see Wilde taking a stab at something new.
I stepped into “The Invite” dreaming about wedding gowns and shared apartments. Needless to say, I didn’t leave the same way, but I also wasn’t entirely hopeless. If the film teaches us anything, it’s that curiosity is the best way to thrive. I think that is quite the message.
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