Review: The Invite

by Aksharaa Agarwal

It’s not quite begun, but there’s instant laughter nonetheless. Before a single image has flashed, an epigraph sets the tone for what is to come. In an establishing scene, Seth Rogen’s Joe bumbles with his bicycle. The crowd chuckles. His bad back is a Chekhov’s gun.

There’s only a handful of ways to try putting it, it’s a show, not tell kind of thing. Though quite some words have been written about The Invite, none of them manage to satisfactorily encapsulate all of what goes down. Already, it’s something to be seen to be known. That’s the first of its fair few accomplishments, which is exactly why sooner or later, it could be the latest on everyone’s lips. What else can come of another marriage dramedy from A24 with an evasive trailer? (Have we seen this film before?) The question is just the same: will promises be delivered?

The trailer is notably suggestive and it’s exactly what anyone might think. Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton in a particular, peculiar, ‘love thy neighbour’ fantasy. There’s more than one kind of invite being extended, of course. It’s not by accident that the trailer plays up the possibilities. While one can certainly anticipate the type that comes to be issued from character to character, there is a third, and it is directed at the audience.

From the theatricality lent by its source material, and enhanced by its capsule top-bill cast, Olivia Wilde takes her cue, driving all components slightly up a notch, including her own ball of nerves, Angela. The strings are almost unbearable. The mood is positively manic. The cast informs, rather than performs, even the most clichéd aspects of their strong characters. It just wouldn’t spark the same way without them. Cutting into the turbulence, the frame narrows and follows, still smooth somehow. The apartment is almost a real place. Anniversary wine, Spanish ham and soooo much cheese. It looks like film, plays like film, but feels and runs with dramatic immediacy. The result is a cosy chambered effect, which will prove necessary to contain the many turns of chaos.

With moments of quick His Girl Friday banter sprinkled throughout, it’s the kind of exaggeration that provides a necessary offset to the tensions deployed therein. A mistimed revelation and lo, tensions abound aplenty, transmuting from desperation, resentment, conflict, into seduction and back. Its strongest achievement is the tonal balance it strikes between sincerity and sarcasm, slipping from one to the other in seamless interstices. One almost doesn’t mind how many crucial topics are addressed, remarkably without the prescriptive treatment or being hollowed out for effect. Tugging along when it seems the pace might be about to go lax, even the predictable or implausible bits are satisfactory. Most of all, it raises serious questions in a way that provokes a double take at the same time as it does a laugh. A rare delight in recent times, it’s the gift of sharp writing.

The third act does drop the ball of all the excitement built-up in favour of a different kind of climax, bittersweet instead of sweet-bitter. Along with Cruz and Norton’s Pína and Hawk, the frenetics fizzle out. However, in an earlier scene stealer, the latter’s character makes a confession that sums up the undeniable core of why it must be thus. Afterall, It’s still the story of a couple, this couple, at odds and ends. Too late no matter what for curtains on the windows. For all their crests and falls, Joe and Angela can’t go very far. They can almost be forgiven.

All in all, it’s cheeky fun with heart, excesses excused. Tempting as it is to dismiss its attempts at poignancy on these among other related grounds, one (or two, or four?) would be remiss not to sit with how it succeeds despite. Every gag is also a stab, and it certainly takes a special skill to make Sade really, really awkward. Doesn’t everybody ‘love a contentious environment’? Neither the hip, the haughty, the honest, nor the hysterical are exempt. Do (not?) try this at home…at your own risk. Everybody needs some.