The Invite

Director: Olivia Wilde

Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Olivia Wilde) are a married couple, whose relationship is less than perfect. They are both frustrated and unfulfilled, leaving them constantly annoyed and bickering with each other. Things take a turn when Joe returns home to find they are hosting a dinner party for their upstairs neighbours Hawk (Ed Norton) and Pina (Penelope Cruz). It’s a dinner party that comes with a few surprises, including Pina and Hawks “passions” that leads to a night of uncomfortable conversations, revelations and tests that Joe and Angela’s relationship may not survive.

Olivia Wilde has delivered a smart, inciteful, funny, often excruciatingly uncomfortable film. It’s 107 minutes of the most painful dinner party you could imagine playing out in front of you.

It explores the challenges of commutation in relationships and how that impacts all of that relationship, the choices we make, what we “settle for” and what we don’t share and how eventually that can all unravel spectacularly.

Its small ensemble cast are pitch perfect. Wilde’s repressed housewife, Seth Rogen as her neurotic husband. Ed Norton’s former fireman, trying hard to be some kind of life guru and Cruz’s exotic, mysterious straight talking therapist, all come together in a watchable mix.

It is the film’s watchability, even at its most toe curlingly awkward, that is it’s highest praise. You’re forever on edge, not sure where it will head next, as it twists and turns from one awkward situation to another. But it also has the ability, to turn on a sixpence, flipping between comedy and pathos seamlessly.

Its smart direction and 1970’s feel give it a real time and place and the single location within the four walls of the apartment, makes it feel enclosed, giving you nowhere to run, even as the awkward level goes off the scale.

It’s a fine watch that never stops being funny, awkward and engaging and manages to wrap all of it on a hopeful note.