‘The Invite’: A Chaotically Witty and Introspective Look on Human Relationships [REVIEW]

The Invite, directed by Olivia Wilde and written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, is not afraid to take a magnifying glass to the human experience and make you see it in all of its vivid, imperfect detail. In fact, it practically begs you to, in such a way that you cannot ignore it.

The bones of this film make up almost any dinner party story: A struggling couple invites their upstairs neighbors over for some meat and cheese. A special vintage wine, some weed, and a lot of arguments follow, along with some very unexpected propositions.

Seth Rogen is Joe, a miserable man who hates everything in his life, but blames everyone but himself. Wilde is his wife Angela, an almost neurotic woman whose communication and needs are as buttoned up as her shirts. She desperately wants this dinner with their neighbors to work out. Joe desperately does not care. In fact, all he cares to do is tell their neighbors to stop having such loud sex.

Though their apartment has enough open space to not feel claustrophobic, the introduction of the neighbors drastically diminishes the overhead room. Hawk (Ed Norton) and Pína (Penélope Cruz) bring with them a certain air of sophistication. It is one that Angela tries–and fails–to grab at for herself with her home decor purchases and what she believes is a perfect food spread. She tries too hard, while Joe tries too little.

Wilde’s control in the director’s chair helps steer this film into something whose turbulence is almost gratifying. The script demands simultaneous conversations, but all of it is delivered in ways that feel natural, as if we are witnessing conversations and their genuine nuances.

Opposites attract–sometimes

The thing about Joe and Angela is that so much of their relationship as it is now is soured by mutual resentment. However, that does not mean they can’t have a few good moments together. They are clearly two people who still love each other, just maybe not the way they did a decade ago.

Hawk and Pína present the opposite side of the coin in this strange group of people. They’re both into each other, and yet, somehow, are also into Joe and Angela’s flavor of indifferent anxiety. Hawk and Pína are fascinating characters in their own right, but the dichotomy between the two couples enhances this.

The cinematography from Adam Newport-Berra makes each scene feel like its own framed moment. Windows are used in moments of longing, and moments of quiet reflection. Aided along by the sprawling open floor plan of the apartment, it sets the two couples in a scene like dolls in a dollhouse, complete with a messy storyline.

The at-times caustic dialogue also hides a vulnerability. Joe and Angela are both deeply self-loathing. It is one of the reasons they both leap at the offer of group sex from Hawk and Pína. It is also one of the reasons it ultimately doesn’t work. As Pína stresses to Joe several times, group sex can’t come from a place of anger.

Jones and McCormack’s script takes us the scenic route into getting to the core of these characters. However, it does so in a way that is fun and funny, with twists and turns at every chance. The Invite is a comedy of errors, there is no mistaking that. But it is also a look into the life of a couple who has lost each other along the way. How can they recover from it, at all?

It is when the film slows down that we get to see the quiet reality of these characters. Their world is changed, but in that moment they still reach for each other.

(Featured image: A24)

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