THE INVITE is a blisteringly brilliant dissection of relationship dynamics and the effects of radical honesty on self-delusion. Taking place over the course of one evening, two couples will get more out of their revelatory get-together than charcuterie and tequila shots. By the end, we will have gotten to know them with all their faults, laughed uproariously at their antics, and had our hearts all but wrenched from our bodies.
Our first couple is Angela (Olivia Wilde who also directed), a stay-at-home mom who abandoned her art training, and Joe (Seth Rogen), a music teacher at a second-tier conservatory. Their new upstairs neighbors are the mysterious Piña (Penelope Cruz) and the painfully empathetic Hawk (Edward Norton).
When we first meet Joe, he is staring into space as his students rehearse, a perfect picture of a man dead on the inside. Angela, on the other hand, is energetically arranging the hors d’oeuvres and setting an ambiance that is strategically informal. When Joe gets home, the bickering begins, both as a useful bit of barbed but witty exposition and as the perfect introduction to a couple that stopped being polite a long time ago and seems to have made their peace with that. Angela is needy, with most of that need manifesting as a need to control that springs from her feelings of powerlessness; Joe is cantankerous after a long day, a fight with his folding bicycle, and his back has going out again. As they argue over whether or not Angela told him they would be having company that night, Piña and Hawk arrive. They are the polar opposites of their hosts. Where Angela and Joe are bedraggled and flustered in pale boho, Piña and Hawk are elegant, even a bit showy, carelessly ensconced in sleek, perfectly tailored black, the definition of centered, self-assured calm.
The norms of etiquette are observed, but not the spirit, as Joe’s biting jokes become more acerbic and Angela’s efforts to pretend everything is fine in order to salvage the disaster only make matters worse. What we have here is an emotional roller-coaster that pulls in several directions as it careens between détente and confrontation amid hidden agendas and furtive motives. What should be taboo becomes harmless and endlessly fascinating, becoming a potent catalyst to snap everyone out of cloud-cuckoo-land.
Wilde is a mistress of the kind of visual subtlety that makes every frame of film a deliberate composition that underscores the action, be it a close-up of Angela’s eager desperation to impress her guests or the way she and Joe are together, yet apart in the same room. Every element is carefully presented. An argument fades as bombastic music takes over. The slam of a piano being shut is a sharp echo of Joe’s unexpectedly explosive outburst when Hawk touches it. The cues, visual and aural, are perfectly harmonized for maximum impact.
The ensemble cast is perfection. Wilde is soulfully skiddish, stifling a conversation with flan wielded as a weapon, or finding the exuberance of throwing control (and caution) to the wind. Cruz and Norton exude exoticism and just a little danger as they push the boundaries of intimacy with an almost predatory patience and an ambiguity that is tantalizing. It is Rogen, though, who delights and amazes with a complex performance that marries bitter humor with alienating despair. He creates a character that is the author of his own misery, yet still provoking our sympathy, if not necessarily our absolution.
THE INVITE is an instant classic that is exhilarating in both concept and execution. It is refined; it is raw; and it is an emotional thriller that celebrates its absurdity with audacious glee. The result is a film that defines the wanting, getting, and realizing that there is always a choice.
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