‘The Invite‘ is one of the unexpected successes of this summer. It has recovered the production costs and made about four times more after a few weeks of its release. The reviews are mostly positive. The audience fills the halls and rewards it with an IMDB rating that is close to the marks reserved for high-quality or very popular films. What is the secret? How did the director and actress Olivia Wilde manage to touch the right chords that make both the audiences and the critics vibrate positively?
Neither the formula nor the theme are original. We are basically dealing with a filmed theater play with four characters: two couples, who gather one evening in the apartment of one of them and gradually reveal their most intimate secrets. The formula worked very well in the 1966 Mike Nichols and Edward Albee’s ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ and in the 2011 Yasmina Reza and Roman Polanski’s ‘Carnage’. The theme of the meeting between two couples, one bourgeois, in crisis, with prejudices and hidden desires and the other liberated and adept at an alternative lifestyle, has been addressed in numerous other films, most of them comedies, many of them romantic. When the libertine Spanish-speaking immigrant couple Piña and Hawk ring the doorbell of neighbors Joe and Angela, we immediately understand that sooner or later the hosts will receive a proposal for group sex or couples swapping. The question is when the proposal will come and whether it will be accepted. The idea has already been circulated in American comedies, but the approach, in most cases, has been ‘soft’ with a romantic touch. In ‘The Invite‘, viewers get the impression that it goes much further – both in terms of language and erotic daring. After all, it is a remake of a Spanish film written and directed by Cesc Gay.
The setting is a not-so-large and not-so-inspiringly decorated, but very well-located apartment in an expensive area of San Francisco. The decoration of the apartment plays an important role in the plot, being Angela’s main occupation, while Joe, her husband, commutes to and from the not-so-famous music school where he is a not-so-enthusiastic teacher. The role of Angela is played by the film director, while Joe is the formidable Seth Rogen. The issue is that while Angela tries to widen her social circle by inviting her neighbors to dinner, he is in no mood for anything, especially for new friends. Their marriage is clearly adrift and the evening has all the makings of a catastrophe, especially since the pie is burnt in the oven and Joe forgets or pretends to forget to buy wine for the guests. Piña and Hawk (played by Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton) are the opposite of the bourgeois couple who adhere to all the stereotypes of language and behavior. Unlike them, their language is free and libertine, and their main interest seems to be sex. The evening starts badly and continues in catastrophe. However, catastrophes of this kind are good subjects for comedy, and we, the audience, are left with the task of watching the heroes fighting each other and finding out some truths about the relationships within and between the two couples along the way. There is no shortage of surprises.
I confess that the introduction and development of the dialogue that takes place in the San Francisco apartment did not catch me from the beginning. My wife and I even had a few moments of dozing off in the first 20-30 minutes. In the end, I connected to what was happening on the screen, mainly thanks to the actors. My overall impression is that of a bloated sitcom, which dares to be more than what can be broadcast in prime time television, but that’s about it. It lacks depth and any interesting social commentary. For me, ‘The Invite‘ remains just a more than acceptable summer entertainment, actually one of the few entertainments that this summer can interest even those who are not passionate about ancient epics or superhero movies. Are they the ones filling the cinema theaters?