Collapsing marriages are a dime a dozen on film. From 1930’s The Divorcee to 2019’s Marriage Story, rotting relationships yield high drama. Into that long tradition comes The Invite. In it, Joe (Seth Rogen), a music teacher still bitter that his rock band never hit it big, grows petulant and nasty when his wife Angela (Olivia Wilde, who also directs) reminds him their upstairs neighbors are coming over for dinner. He begs her to cancel, but when she refuses, Joe threatens to ruin the evening by complaining to the neighbors that their loud sex has woken him and Angela up multiple times.
However, rather than be put-off by Joe’s initial standoffishness, Hawk (Edward Norton) and Piña (Penélope Cruz), “love a contentious environment.” Indeed, Wilde, working from a script co-written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, seems happy to make the characters and the audience sit with their discomfort—delivering surprising comedy in the process.
More than anything, The Invite is couched in discomfort comedy. Angela and Joe’s marriage is so miserable that they can’t stop themselves from fighting even in front of their guests. When they run out of wine because Joe didn’t buy any on the way home, Angela pressures him to open the bottle they’ve been saving for a special occasion. When Hawk tries to lighten the mood by telling Joe to thank the uncle who gifted the wine to them, Joe retorts that he’s dead and we can feel the way he’s just filing this moment away for later, saving it for a blowout fight after Hawk and Piña eventually leave.
But Hawk and Piña don’t leave, they seem to not only accept Angela and Joe’s behavior, but file it away for their own purposes. For those who’ve seen the trailer, that purpose is clear, but even without knowing the twist that partially gives the film its title, The Invite is built on the chemistry amongst its four principles. Between Wilde and Rogen, that chemistry is primarily adversarial, but particularly once Piña and Hawk reveal their motives, they become singularly united for the first time in the film, almost giddy with excitement. For their parts, Cruz and Norton have rarely weaponized their sex appeal to more devastating effect. We learn early that Piña is a sex therapist and while it in part explains how she seems to constantly analyze Joe and Angela, it’s also clear that she’s sizing them up. Just through sustained eye contact or a seemingly innocent touch, she helps shift the energy in the room.
For his part, Hawk’s moves are subtler. On some level, that’s because he has to contend with a hostility from Joe that Angela never exhibits for Piña. Rather, he seems built to make women of a certain age go wild. Whether it’s the way he immediately notices and appreciates Angela’s hard work on the apartment renovation—almost bringing her to tears—or his reveal that he retired from firefighting because he was seriously injured while saving a dog, it’s no wonder Angela can barely hide her attraction to him.
Indeed, Piña and Hawk feel perfectly constructed to drive Joe and Angela crazy and The Invite is, more than anything, a sex farce. Wilde’s previous film, the much-maligned Don’t Worry Darling was equally unsubtle, but this shows far more promise and vision, more akin to her first feature, Booksmart. Whether its Adam Newport-Berra’s clever cinematography (often staging our characters in a single shot across rooms through mirrors) or the choice to play an instrumental version of “Habanera” from Georges Bizet’s Carmen at a key moment, there’s a playfulness and invention here that keeps things fun even at their most confrontational.
Still, fun as The Invite can be, it’s hard to argue it’s a standout in the genre. It’s not as funny as last year’s Splitsville or as bracing as 2004’s Closer. But just because The Invite isn’t a masterpiece doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile. It has a quartet of great performances, looks great and delivers genuine laughs. It’s a movie for adults and who can complain about that these days?
