THE INVITE – Review by Susan Granger
I’m glad I waited to see The Invite when it reached Prime Video because – while Olivia Wilde helms this forebodingly unpredictable sex comedy – it’s not worth a trip to the multiplex.
Adapted by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones from Cese Gay’s Spanish film Sentimental (2020), based on his stage play, it’s basically a four-hander, set in San Francisco.
Bickering Angela (Olivia Wilde) and Joe (Seth Rogen) are preparing to host an evening with their upstairs neighbors while their12 year-old daughter is away at a sleepover.
A bitter, perpetually cranky former indie-rock musician, Joe teaches at a Bay Area music conservatory and Angela’s been redecorating the apartment he inherited from his parents.
When Pina (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton) arrive, it’s obvious that they’re a fun-loving, well-matched pair – everything Joe and Angela are not.
Hawk is a retired firefighter and Pina is a psychotherapist specializing in sexology – which prompts Joe to caustically comment about the ‘loud animal noises’ they hear at night, emanating from the bedroom above.
Apparently, Pina and Hawk are what used to be called ‘swingers,’ encouraging others to participate in casual New Age group sex. One revelation leads to another about shedding inhibitions and participating in consensual polyamory – as Joe & Pina/Angela & Hawk pair off into different rooms.
What happens is for you to discover – as all four actors play their parts convincingly under Olivia Wilde’s perceptive direction which obviously allows improvisation. Reminiscent of but not nearly as good as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? it’s yet another deep dive into a tense, troubled, middle-age marriage.
Psychotherapist/relationship counselor Esther Perel is listed as consultant; her ideas pepper the plot, particularly in the third act when Pina asserts that marriages must occasionally be reborn and reincarnated.
As the credits roll, there’s a tribute to the late Diane Keaton, who played Olivia Wilde’s mother in Love the Coopers (2015) and encouraged her to direct.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, The Invite” is an erotic, sexually explicit 6 – available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
