The Invite

For anyone expecting a mature exploration of polyamory and non-conforming relationships, this film isn’t for you. For those wanting to laugh out loud, physically cringe, and immerse yourself in a tense, fast-paced comedy-drama testing what happens when a rocky marriage brushes up against the hot, atypical love between two eccentrics still in the throes of their honeymoon phase, then please go see The Invite.

Directed by Olivia Wilde, a decidedly unhappy married couple Angela (Wilde) and Joe (Seth Rogan) invite their upstairs neighbours Piña (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton) to a dinner party. Destined from the start to be doomed, the evening doesn’t unfurl; it spirals, explodes, collapses, and drags itself exhausted to bed.  

Angela and Joe embody all the tropes of a marriage on thin ice (nit-picking, passive aggressiveness, complacency, blame) while Piña and Hawk flaunt their passion with loud banging and growling through the ceiling every night and lots of heavy petting on the sofa after dessert.

Cruz, as usual, is an onscreen magnetic force. Norton pulls off his moderately sleazy character effortlessly. Wilde is so tightly wound and anxious it makes you hold your breath. Rogan truly comes into his own in his spectacular performance of the down-and-out music teacher who was once in a rock ‘n’ roll band, undercutting the evening’s proliferating absurdities with incredulous one-liners that let a breeze into the claustrophobic atmosphere.

A four-piece chamber comedy, the simple premise makes for a film filled with dialogue, taking place in the intimacy of a few rooms in Joe and Angela’s recently renovated apartment. Nothing tells you that the audience is gripped more than hooting and hollering from somewhere out back of the theatre. The sharp command of tension had the audience at the film’s mercy, cleverly building and releasing in all the right moments. Pair this with the fact that everyone who has ever been in a relationship is most likely witnessing aspects of their own foibles on the big screen, and I imagine viewers come away feeling very seen – or rather – exposed.

I didn’t love the ending; it tied too neat a bow around the evening. At the same time, endings are hard and it’s difficult to know where to finish…