At The Movies with James Phelan: The Invite
The Invite
Lately it’s mainly been blockbusters under the microscope so allow me to shift gears this week with a distinctly adult offering that feels very small and intimate by comparison. Albeit this film is still loaded with four Hollywood stars.
It’s so intimate in fact that having reviewed a cartoon last time out, I feel that I should confer an age-related reading cert on this review. The actual film carries a 16 cert in cinemas but in the texture and depth of its explicit discussions it actually feels like an 18 cert to me.
To be clear, there is no nudity nor is anything graphic seen onscreen but the film is filled with what my dearly departed dad would have deemed dirty talk. There’s so much talk here that it’s no surprise to hear this same material has previously been a play and has also been filmed before in different cities, cultures and languages around the world. Now, apparently, it’s America’s turn.
It’s nearly entirely set in one apartment but the film opens with some oxygen from the outside world as jaded music teacher Joe (Seth Rogen) cycles across San Francisco. When he returns home his bad back and short temper means he is dismayed to hear that his industrious wife Angela (Olivia Wilde) has invited their glamorous upstairs neighbours down for dinner.
Despite having a bone to pick with the invitees, anti-social Joe does his best to call the whole thing off but a determined Angela holds firm. However, the discussion gets so heated when the impossibly suave Pina (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Ed Norton) arrive, this annoyingly perfectly attuned pair pick up on the palpable tension in the air.
And this dear reader is the sweet spot of brittle awkwardness that the film excels at. Wilde double jobs as director and she adroitly creates a pressure cooker atmosphere that will test your cringe factor and occasionally jab at your funny bone. The whole film has a claustrophobic clammy feel as a desperate to impress Angela works overtime to curate the perfect evening while trying to defuse the hand grenades her husband keeps lobbing into the conversation.
All of this is slickly done. Angela is a frazzled host almost coated in flop sweat, while her ostensible partner couldn’t give a flying duck about how the whole night pans out. The slowly unravelling drama is spiky and is not without humour or genuine insight into modern relationships. Yet this is still the cinematic equivalent of being stuck in a room with a rowing couple. And how many of us want to deliberately put ourselves in that position? Especially on a night out…
That said the film is never dull. Rogen is allowed full rein to puncture the loftier notions and therapy talk that permeates this chamber piece. And Cruz is a slinky provocative presence who knows what buttons to push. Norton too has a ton of fun as an overly enthused rug fan and former fireman with an impossibly cool name. There’s an in joke in that last line but Hawk gets to justify his life and assumed name with a surprisingly emotional climactic speech.
The film’s title could refer to two different invites within the story. The invitation for dinner is followed by a far more risqué invite later in the film. Again, this late lurid change in direction is mostly played for laughs but really the proposed sexy scenario really only further exposes the cracks in Angela and Joe’s fragile marriage. So, a night that starts striving for perfection ends with open wounds and a deeply uncertain future.
It’s not my intention to warn people away from rare grown-up fare like this. It’s a powerful acting showcase and it’s got real zest and bite in the writing. However, here’s a few people this film isn’t for. I wouldn’t recommend it for a first date. Equally if you are arguing with your partner a lot lately, this film will not heal you. It might well make things worse. Everyone else is fair game to see if this spicy tease of a film tickles your fancy.
