"The Invite" is one of the vanishing breed of relationship comedies for adults, a mature dramedy about four people in an apartment spending an eventful evening together. As you might expect, it's based on a play - the Spanish "The People Upstairs" - which has now been filmed half a dozen times in nearly as many languages. The American version is written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones. Olivia Wilde directs and also stars in one of the major roles, doing a fine job at both.
Angela (Wilde) and Joe (Seth Rogen) play an unhappily married couple in San Francisco. Joe comes home one day from work to discover that Angela has invited over the couple who live upstairs, Piña (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton). Joe wants to cancel, but Angela is very invested in the get-together, sparking a fight. This is interrupted when Piña and Hawk arrive, but tensions are high throughout the evening as the four characters make introductions, get to know one another, and it turns out that there's another invitation on the table.
If you've seen any of the trailers or advertising for the film, you know that "The Invite" broaches the topic of partner swapping and discusses other titillating sexual acts, though nothing explicit is ever shown onscreen. Piña and Hawk turn out to be very sexually open and adventurous, and offer some new possibilities to Joe and Angela that might help get them out of the rut that their lives have fallen into. However, this in turn throws some of the issues with their marriage into sharper relief. "The Invite" is built on performances, where the conversations are the set pieces, and the reaction shots are as funny as any of the dialogue. Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen are both unusually committed here, very well matched as scene partners, and I would have happily watched them argue and verbally spar with each other for an additional hour or two.
As much as I enjoyed "The Invite," it took me a while to warm up to it. Part of it is due to the subject matter and part of it is due to the kind of film this is. "The Invite" is very good at being a very talky, small-scale feature that I would have expected to be made by an independent director with a cast full of theater stalwarts. I went into the movie mistakenly expecting something bigger and broader, and spent a considerable amount of time waiting for fireworks that weren't there. "The Invite" is actually quite grounded and intimate, with some sentimental edges. Also, as much as I liked Wilde and Rogen, I found Cruz and Norton pretty uninteresting - more like caricatures of what sexually adventurous people are supposed to be rather than the real thing. Their performances are engaging and convincing when they need to be, but the characters are very slight. There's a theory floating around that Piña and Hawk are not real at all and Joe and Angela just got drunk and imagined them, which I could see.
Though the comedic energy is high and the ending is hopeful, this can't negate the fact that "The Invite" is about the end of a relationship. There's a bittersweet undercurrent running through the whole movie that really hit me when I realized it was there. Part of the reason why the laughs are so big and hit so hard is that there's a lot of pain and frustration behind them. I've never seen Seth Rogen in a role this serious before - and the more serious he is, the funnier he is. As for Olivia Wilde, frankly, she has never had a screen role this good. It's unfortunate that she apparently had to direct the movie herself to land it. I don't think of these two as dramatic actors, and it was a nice surprise to discover that they are, in fact, capable of sincere drama when they feel so inclined.
And I don't think it would hurt if they were so inclined more often. I'd really like to see more films like "The Invite," and Rogen and Wilde stretching their acting muscles more regularly too.
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