Upon its release in 1969, Paul Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was both praised and criticised for being a social commentary and a verdict on marriage (and Americans) that was conveyable only through comedy. The film’s watershed financial success made it possible for others to follow suit and explore themes of consensual promiscuity on screen. Olivia Wilde’s third directorial endeavour is a great addition to this “canon” of sorts. The Invite is a star-driven chamber piece, with Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, Edward Norton and Wilde herself at the centre of this partner swap, comedy-thriller.
From the get-go, genre hybridity and a fluid tonal range steer the current of Angela (Wilde) and Joe (Rogen)’s tense relationship towards and away from the Scylla and Charybdis of every heterosexual marriage: a couple who might be better than them. After two shared decades and a kid off to college, the pair have a marriage that has become comfortably stale in the way you imagine Bergman’s protagonists in a prequel to the break-up masterpiece, Scenes from a Marriage. This is quite unlike their upstairs neighbours whose “floor-shaking fucking” and indiscreet orgasms puts the (implied) sexless couple to shame. The Invite promises a face-off disguised as a genteel dinner party as soon as Piña and Hawk (Cruz and Norton) knock on the door downstairs.
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Wilde remakes Cesc Gay’s 2020 film The People Upstairs with a keen sense of comedic timing to mitigate relationship issues and advance the plot. It’s so sharp, in fact, that it harks back to classic-era screwball comedies. The establishing scene has Angela and Joe escalate a fight to epic proportions – think tantrums and primal screams – and neither Wilde nor Rogen ever drop the ball. Each of their performances is so well calibrated to the other’s, combining an expressionistic weight with a Looney Tunes codependency, all with delightful results. There are, of course, higher stakes to their verbal sparring, especially with another couple present. Piña’s homemade flan is nothing next to an overcooked soufflé; Hawk’s job as a firefighter makes Joe feel even smaller in his casual music-teaching job, but it’s obvious that desire wears the cloak of envy. What if sharing is indeed caring?
Non-monogamy plays a crucial role in The Invite, a film that’s notably anti-didactic. There are scenes where characters discuss their sexual experiences and inclinations – and the occasional Below Deck “preference sheet” joke – but they are never prescriptive. On the contrary – the quartet of performances embody the wide spectrum of reactions one might associate with alternative relationship structures, from giddy, infantile excitement to the suffocating insecurity and fear of losing your partner to another. While the comedy is excellent (hyperbolic but vulnerable at its core), there is even more value in The Invite’s remedial humour and a shared attempt to not only make the contradictions of hetero-monogamy more palatable, but pleasurable.