A couple on the rocks invites a set of neighbors for a dinner party. Secrets, insecurities, and more come out in Olivia Wilde’s dynamically shot, character-strong anxiety comedy The Invite.
The Invite, directed by Olivia Wilde, is one of the year’s best films. As I often do for the best of the best, the quickest of run downs, as I tell you to run out and see it. The Invite is an impressively and powerfully performed update to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a reference many others are bound to make, but it’s apt. It has the barbed wit and depth of characters. But of course, for the sake of review, I can expand that sentiment to the whys of the brilliance of the acerbically funny and dynamically designed film. With The Invite, which was the closing film of this year’s SIFF, Wilde returns to the sharpness of her directorial debut with Booksmart (my #1 film of its year) after the profound disappointment of Don’t Worry, Darling (a film I HATED).
First, yes, I compare The Invite to Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, one of the greatest plays ever written. It was also a 1968 film with Elizabeth Taylor, directed by Mike Nichols, but confession time: I’ve not seen it. I have read it and seen the play a few times. But The Invite, as written by Will McCormick & Rashida Jones, is actually based on Cesc Gay’s 2020 film The People Upstairs/Sentimental, itself based on his own play (The Invite is the 5th international remake!). But those familiar with Albee’s play can see the connection: a pair of couples, one openly breaking down and the other seemingly stronger but also with issues, have a little party, and the walls of secrecy come crashing down, bringing forth hidden and not-so-hidden resentment, diseases of personality, and other issues. And it does so deliciously, with an incredible beat, running through but never feeling rushed.
At its heart, The Invite is a filmed play. McCormack & Jones’s script is razor sharp in character creation and beats, connecting the dynamics of a play: witty, pointed lines, the banter, the ever-shifting levels of control, the wrenching reveals. The Invite is the sort of film in which one wonders who knows what, and how, and what is true, what is ready to be revealed, and the audience is knowingly strung along as an unspoken player in the games; and it’s all games. Barbed games, cutting rules that eventually tear down and through any lies and deceit. Within all the games and lies, mistruths, and diversions, there’s an uncomfortable honesty of the dynamics of adult relationships. It’s all utterly hilarious, earning the biggest laughs of the year in the domestic destruction. For a strength of script to come to life, one needs the right performers.
And Wilde does, with a set of four performers (and besides some students in the opening, the only players here) at the top of their game. At the heart of it is some lady the director found, you may have heard of her: Olivia Wilde. For a sign of how strong she is as an actor, also at SIFF this year was Greg Araki’s I Want Your Sex (expect a review on release at the end of July. You, reader, remind me to add that link here then!) in a just as good but VERY different performance. Here she’s Angela, a high-strung housewife, on edge for the get-together she’s tossed together, eager to engage the new, cooler couple and all too often embarrassed by her husband. The “I can’t believe you just said that eyes” is such a key look in a whole playbook of amazing facial cues. That husband is Joe, played by Seth Rogen. I’ve heard some talk he’s playing himself, but I’d argue that yes, he does play similar roles, but damned, he’s good at it, and this has a certain something different that elevates, a sort of Rogen with a whole bunch of Albert Brooks mixed within. Opposite them are the couple Hawk, a seemingly zen former firefighter played by Edward Norton, and Penelope Cruz’s Pina. She’s deliciously sly, a wonder to read her across the film. Both men tend to say their exact truths, to the chagrin of one another and their partners, but they are different truths and sorts of honesty. It’s an actor’s paradise of facial expression and looks, letting the beats and glances do as much of the work as the quick-paced dialogue. They play off one another with incredible chemistry, building up and up and up, but always feeling naturally moving through the script.
But this isn’t just that never better acting and the sharp script. While very playlike in action, wit, and dialogue methods and cadence, Wilde is not content to put the camera down and stick to a standard two-shot. Instead, she creates a dynamic film visually, using screencraft to enhance the character and performer’s action. There’s a tightness in the palpable tension, with Wilde clearly learning from the out-of-control issues of Don’t Worry Darling. The blocking is on point, using the space of the sprawling apartment of designed walls and windows to serve character beats: a glance into another room through a window, a jut of a doorless room separation form insights to the character and their mental states. Specific lighting choices and camera set-ups highlight or pull attention. Amazing choices in editing by Anthony Boys and Yorgos Mavropsaridis not only build the beat of the scene but also serve as punch lines and reactions. Adam Newport-Berra shoots the film on 35mm, which seems like an odd choice for a film like this, but it works. The invite has the grain and texture; from the well-designed opening credits to the manner of shooting the apartment, this depth harkens to an earlier era of cinema. The apartment, large but claustrophobic, is lived in, soaking up the energy of the occupants and serving and separating their lives.
Olivia Wilde elevates Will McCormick & Rashida Jones’s pointed, character-driven script (as based on Cesc Gay’s original) to a masterpiece of humor in tension and a tightly designed screenplay with dynamic filmmaking. Wilde herself, Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penelope Cruz are pitch-perfect, working in and around one another with a voracious energy. It all comes together with an amazing strength to say: accept The Invite.