52 Films by Women Vol 10. 33. THE INVITE. (Director: Olivia Wilde)
Pictured: Angela (Olivia Wilde, centre) and Joe (Seth Rogen, standing) listen to their guests with interest in a scene from the marital comedy, 'The Invite', adapted from the 2020 Spanish film, 'Sentimental' by screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack and directed by Olivia Wilde. Still courtesy of A24 (US) / Black Bear (UK)
The Invite, adapted by screenwriters Rashida Jones and
Will McCormack from Cesc Gay’s 2020 Spanish film, Sentimental (English
title ‘The People Upstairs’), feels like a personal project for
actress-turned-director Olivia Wilde. Wilde was publicly humiliated by or on
behalf of her estranged husband Jason Sudeikis in the run-up to the release of
her 2022 psychological thriller, Don’t
Worry Darling, whose request for
child custody was served to her while she was on stage at Comic Con. Wilde
knows something of the pain of a relationship that has run its course. She
channels this into her filmmaking. The bulk of The Invite is set in
a San Francisco apartment that is home to Joe (Seth Rogen), Angela (Wilde) and
their teenage daughter Maggie, who is out at a sleepover. Wilde, who is noticeably growing as a
filmmaker with each successive movie – The Invite is her
third as director – keeps the action visually and aurally interesting. It isn’t
always subtle, yet, for example, I found myself counting the lamps in Joe and
Angela’s front room – all six of them.
The opening looks as
though it has been shot on ‘ends’ – that is the section on a reel of film where
the image disappears leaving only the sound. Joe is at the piano. Angela is
laughing. The tune, a melancholy one, isn’t quite there but you sense the fun
in the couple putting it together. But Joe is no longer engaged with his life.
He is sitting in a concert hall listening to a bunch of musicians rehearse,
unable to give them meaningful direction. ‘Do it again, a couple more times’,
he tells them. The orchestra – uncredited as far as I could tell – are stunned.
They are silent as Joe marches down the aisle, puts on his bicycle helmet and
unfolds his folding bicycle. His grunting distress is only heard not seen –
Wilde cuts to the orchestra watching him. Then the credits – a 1960s-style
split screen montage – kick in. Joe cycling up a hill. Angela picking out some
ham and purchasing a rug. By the time we get to the director’s credit, Joe
arrives home and falls to the floor. ‘Shoes,’ Angela tells him as she walks
from one room to the other.
Shoes are the last
thing Joe is thinking about. He is in agony. Angela reminds him that the
folding bike is supposed to help his back, at least when he pedals it. He helps
himself to some cold cuts from the spread Angela has prepared. She tells him not
to eat. They have guests.
So far, so much like
a filmed play. Yet The Invite is unmistakably a film, in the tradition of Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. Here, though it is attitudes towards marriage
rather than race that are aired with the audience split between uptight Joe and
curious Angela. You might consider Joe to be the film’s principal viewpoint
character – he’s grumpy, sceptical, sarcastic but direct. Yet Angela commands a
lot of our sympathy. We learn that she was the groupie who tracked down and
married a musician, who had one hit with his band that was big in the day. But
Joe doesn’t touch his piano anymore and doesn’t like to be reminded about his
failed career. His default position is to retreat to his office, a mancave with
a lot of records in it (12 inch, naturally) as well as a stash of marijuana, a
signature Rogen thing.
Angela is upset that
Joe has both forgotten the wine and that the neighbours are coming to visit their
recently redecorated apartment. The classical pick and mix incidental music (by
Devonté Hynes) underscores Angela’s hurt, and then some, becoming Angela’s
weapon, a club by which she can beat Joe (metaphorically speaking). There is an
amusing vignette in which Angela invites Joe to arrive home again – a do over,
something she learnt from a podcast. He does so but ends up telling Angela that
she should send the neighbours away. The music, accusatory violins, repeat
their strident tone. By the time Angela changes her top and helps herself to
the cheese – she has purchased jamon for her Spanish guest – the neighbours
arrive.
They are Hawk (Edward
Norton) and Piña (Penélope Cruz). He is laid back, affecting politeness and
enthusiasm. She is a truth-telling fireball. Of the cast, Cruz is the odd one
out – she is the only one who hasn’t directed a film – but she has a powerful
presence. Not only is she confident in herself but she has a way of explaining
menopause - using two olives to represent testicles to ask Joe to imagine them
shrivelled up and hanging useless for decades - that makes Joe and all the men
in the audience think twice about joking about it. For his part, Joe has beef
with the couple. Their lovemaking – specifically Piña’s orgasms - has disturbed
his sleep, and he wants to talk to them about it. Angela would prefer if he
were civil.
Joe is particularly
needled by Hawk, whom he considers to be insincere. ‘Should I take my shoes
off,’ he asks Joe. ‘I don’t give a f-k,’ Joe replies. As Joe explains later, he
doesn’t believe anyone is named Hawk. Sure enough, Hawk’s birth name is Howard,
by which time we think ‘Howard Hawk’ is a homage to the director of the
screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby (if you pluralise the surname). Indeed,
everything might be ‘gay all of a sudden’, were not Hawk so insistent on
playing Joe’s record. Joe refuses most emphatically.
What transpires are
various shifts in dynamics. Joe loses the moral high ground when he denies ever
complaining about said lovemaking – Hawk shows him the footage from their ring
camera. But then Hawk describes seeing Angela walk naked past a window without
a curtain. That made him think he could talk to Joe and Angela about his
proposal. Indeed, Angela’s quasi exhibitionist behaviour, which shocks Joe by
the way, might be considered the invite of the title.
In Gay’s film, the eponymous
people upstairs are much younger than the protagonists. Hawk is older than Joe.
Still, Joe is surprised to be included in Hawk and Piña’s proposal, which I
shall not reveal out of respect for its comic impact. Joe and Angela’s
response, which has caveats, powers the second half of the movie, as we learn
that the objectionable sounds late at night do not come from Piña herself. In
the meantime, she confronts Joe for looking at her in the elevator; did he
think he was worthy? She also acquaints him with her tattoos – two calling
birds on her back near her shoulder; Joe has tattoos of his own.
As Angela, Wilde
shows a wide-eyed flair for comedy acting herself, whether standing in a bath
fully clothed when giving Hawk a tour of the house or responding to Hawk’s
effusive praise of her rug. She has questions about the proposal that betray
her excited curiosity, but she also responds with practical energy. As Joe,
Rogen turns into a nodding dog. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ he tells Piña, when
they are alone, as if hyperaware he is sharing the screen with cinema’s heir to
Italian actresses Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Claudia Cardinale. We
discover Piña’s profession and Hawk’s secret.
Pictured: Two couples (Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton) getting to know each other - and perhaps then some - in the marital comedy, 'The Invite', adapted from Cesc Gay's 2020 film 'Sentimental' by screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack and directed by Olivia Wilde. Still courtesy of A24 (US) / Black Bear (UK).
As a melancholy comedy
of manners that ends with a need to return a pie dish, The Invite provides a fair number of chuckles. Joe and
Angela are faced with a hard truth about the state of their marriage, but the
ending – also involving a piano - suggests they might be able to deal with it.
There is another reading, that the opening is actually a flash forward and that
the faded image represents the end. I’m not sure every viewer will come to that
conclusion, but it makes the actual ending, which shows Angela at the piano,
more subtle.
Reviewed at PictureHouse Central, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, Saturday 20 June 2026, 22:30 (‘The World’s Biggest All-Nighter, Vol 5) and at Curzon Riverside, Canterbury, Thursday 16 July 2026, 20:00 screening
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