Soufflé is for dinner but much more is on the table in Olivia Wilde’s deliciously entertaining chamber comedy, “The Invite,” about a couple whose marriage is on the rocks invite their upstairs neighbors over for an impromptu get-together.
Such a gathering is, of course, a standby setup of stage and screen, alike. Faster than I can say “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” you can probably predict some of where “The Invite” is going: a spread of quips, come-ons and marital catharsis all served on a tidy, single-setting plate.
But even if you can sometimes feel the gears turning in “The Invite,” it’s cunningly syncopated and cleverly acted enough to make it a welcome, modern twist on the drawing-room comedy of manners. Unlike the dinner served in the film though, it’s baked to near-perfection.
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This is Wilde’s third film as a director, and because of her apparent grasp of the material, it’s her best. She started promisingly with the high school comedy “Booksmart.” But her ambitious follow-up, “Don’t Worry Darling,” was a clunky, overcooked disappointment. Comedy may be more in her wheelhouse. Besides, it’s Wilde’s brilliantly comic performance that sets “The Invite” apart.
In the movie’s opening moments, Joe (Seth Rogen) and his wife, Angela (Wilde), make very different ways home to their San Francisco apartment. Joe, an associate professor at a so-so music conservatory, schleps up the city’s hills on a foldable bike while Angela stylishly picks flowers and food from the market.
When Joe collapses in their apartment, they are almost immediately at each other’s throats. Not helping is that Joe is shocked to learn their 12-year-old daughter is at a sleepover and the neighbors are coming for dinner. Angela, clearly desperate to impress them, has not only prepared a meal but bought a new outfit and living-room rug. The woman, she says with reverence, “has, like, presence.”
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Joe’s only interest in seeing their neighbors — largely unknown to them — is to register a noise complaint. Their loud sex at early-morning hours has driven Joe mad. Angela, though, refuses to let him say anything that would interrupt what she deems sound like “spectacular orgasms.”
The two of them are shouting at each other just as the bell rings, so Pína ( Penélope Cruz ) and Hawk ( Edward Norton ) realize right away they’re walking into a charged atmosphere. Hawk embraces it. “We love a contentious environment,” he says.
“The Invite” does, too, and the combination of almost completely opposite couples make for some bravura exchanges. The script, by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, is based on Spanish director Cesc Gay’s 2020 movie “The People Upstairs,” which has already been widely adapted and translated.
The couple from upstairs are intentionally hard to believe. Hawk, if the name wasn’t enough already, is a firefighter. Pína is, well, Penélope Cruz, and very glamorously indeed has “presence.” She’s a psychotherapist and sexologist, and both she and Hawk speak with in-touch-with-themselves harmony.
But while the couple’s differences make for some fun clashes, the conflict most worth following is in Angela’s face. She’s a ball of anxiety, strenuously trying to hide her embarrassment while constantly flashing her yearning for what Hawk and Pína possess. In a four-hander where each performer excels in their own way, Wilde gives a neurotic tour de force. Just the alacrity with which she dispatches a completely burned soufflé into the trash, right as things go off the rails, is a thing of beauty.
So is the rhythmic dialogue of Jones and McCormack’s script, which at every turn mixes deeply personal topics like perimenopause and sex regularity with subjects like paint color and the music of Sade. “The Invite” would probably work better if Wilde trusted the cadence of dialogue a bit more, but the heavy-handed strings of Dev Hynes’ score at least serves as a reflection of Angela’s tense state.
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The movie’s title refers not to dinner but an offer made midevening. The noise from upstairs, Pína and Hawk confess, is from their sex parties. Angela and Joe are immediately curious, and not at all dismissive when Pína and Hawk ask if they’d be interested in a foursome.
How far Angela and Joe, and Wilde’s film, are willing to go is better left unsaid. But suffice to say that while sex is a quite literal subject in “The Invite,” it’s also a symbol. Joe and Angela have for years been locked in the kind of stasis that plenty of couples end up in. Nothing says this more than how Joe, who many years ago had a one-hit wonder titled “One Girl,” won’t even touch a piano anymore.
Wilde, who adopted her last name from Oscar Wilde, nods to the Irish writer in the movie’s opening quotation: “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.” But “The Invite” is far from an anti-monogamy movie. It’s about allowing yourself to change and making yourself available to new experiences — not necessarily having a foursome.
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It’s a surprising highlight of “The Invite” that this idea is most eloquently voiced by Norton’s Hawk. His character could so easily be a punchline, but Norton’s unique talent for melding smarmy with sweet turns a surprisingly tender monologue into something also genuinely insightful. “The Invite” might appear risqué, but when it comes to what it really has to say about relationships, it’s not so wild.
“The Invite,” an A24 release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for sexual material, language throughout, and drug use. Running time: 107 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
