Four years on, Olivia Wilde is finally back in the directing chair. After a brilliant, barnstorming debut with 2019 graduation comedy Booksmart, Wilde had perhaps the worst sophomore experience of anyone’s life with Don’t Worry Darling. I won’t drag you through it again, but it goes something like: Harry Styles, angry fans, beef with Shia LaBeouf, divorce from Jason Sudeikis, Spitgate. What’s more, the film was widely panned and will chiefly be remembered for the drama surrounding it.
But Wilde is a skilled director, and she reminds audiences of that with The Invite, a four-hander set across one evening in which two neighbouring couples (the erotically charged Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton, versus the neurotically charged Wilde and Seth Rogen) have dinner together.
The entire hour and 47 minutes takes place in the apartment of Angela (Wilde) and Joe (Rogen), lending it a fittingly claustrophobic feel. This is also probably because the script is an adaptation of the Spanish play and film Sentimental, rejigged here by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack. As the dinner party gets underway, Wilde pads around in socks, all onomatopoeic anxiety, while Rogen complains constantly and hilariously. Their guests, Piña and Hawk, are the opposite: relaxed, alluring, uncomfortably open.
What makes The Invite truly great is its ending
The night starts as a straightforward couple-off, then becomes something much funnier and more absurd, yet entirely plausible — even something you might have heard of from a friend of a friend of a friend. What makes The Invite truly great, though, is its ending. I won’t give too much away, but it reframes the happily ever after ending beautifully. Cruz delivers a masterclass of a monologue that will force audiences to do some very serious soul-searching. When she talks about children of unhappy couples “marinating in anxiety”, it hits like a bullet.
Cruz is the flickering flame of this film — her Spanishness hammed up for effect, her sexuality oozing and her comic timing excellent. Watching her and Rogen unexpectedly hitting it off is a real treat, while Norton is the perfect balm to Wilde’s mania. It’s all brought together with a lovely score by Devonté Hynes, the mind behind Blood Orange, who created the dream dinner party soundtrack for a dinner party that couldn’t be less dreamy. And yet somehow, I left the cinema wanting to be invited back.
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