Not enough people managed to see last year’s self-billed “unromantic comedy” Splitsville, a shame for how tremendously entertaining it was and for what it represents at this given moment. A rigorously well-directed, genuinely funny, relatably messy look at two couples dealing with the maelstrom of non-monogamy, it was the kind of smart, well-crafted film for adults we are constantly complaining we don’t get enough of.
I had a similar thrill watching The Invite at its sold-out Sundance premiere on Saturday night. Like that film, it is also about two adult couples negotiating anxieties surrounding sex with other people – and also like that film, it’s really, consistently funny and stylishly directed, made with the kind of care and rigidity that comedies just aren’t afforded now. It doesn’t have the same absurdist slapstick streak – it’s much more of this world – but it made me feel equally energised, a reminder that maybe that mid-sized movie gap is finally being filled. I just hope more people see this one.
More people probably will, given the star power: the two couples are played by Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde (married and miserable) and Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton (unmarried and happy). The film even starts with a leading Oscar Wilde quote – “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.” – teasing a night that Edward Albee would approve of. The film is also directed by Wilde, her third film after fizzy teen comedy Booksmart and beautiful yet maddeningly stupid thriller Don’t Worry Darling. She is an actor who hasn’t always found her groove but has quickly become an impressively committed film-maker who collaborates with the finest craftspeople (even when the Don’t Worry Darling script made me want to roll my eyes, I was worried about missing something visually) – and The Invite marks a notably exciting new high for her.
It’s a mostly one-location comedy, but Wilde shoots on 35mm (!) and works with Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) on the score, as well as four-time Oscar nominee Arianne Phillips on costumes, Yorgos Lanthimos editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis, and cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, who previously brought an epic sweep to The Last Black Man in San Francisco and, coincidentally, Splitsville. Not that the sharp and fastidious script from Rashida Jones and Will McCormack needed such elevation to distract (this is no Don’t Worry Darling), but it just gives the film this wonderfully glossy, classic feeling – a given decades ago but a miracle now.
A remake of Spanish comedy The People Upstairs (which has previously been remade four times internationally), it focuses on one disastrous hangout as the married couple downstairs invites the freewheeling couple from upstairs over for drinks. Joe (Rogen) is an unhappy music professor who prefers not to talk about his failed music career, instead focusing on an unending trail of complaints, and as we meet him, he’s complaining about an invite he wasn’t aware of. His wife, Angela (Wilde), is desperate to impress, deeply proud of the jamón she brought for Spanish Pina (Cruz) who she is already jealous of, not just for her effortless sexuality but for the many times she has heard her orgasm through the ceiling (Pina later tells Joe it’s prosciutto and he tells her to keep it to herself as Angela will “commit suicide” if she finds out). Joe is less jealous of the impossibly named Hawk (Norton) – he’s more irritated, but the couple represents a sexually liberated ideal that seems out of reach at this stage of marriage. Maybe tonight is the night to change that.
The film does take time to settle. The initial stretch of Rogen and Wilde sniping before their guests arrive is at such a high pitch that I worried the film would be as exhaustingly unrelenting. Some of Wilde’s early directorial choices are a little too fussy, as if she is desperate to let us know that we’re not watching some staid, shoulda-been-a-play chamberpiece. But the pace and the film-making soon relax, and as uncomfortable as the sparring might often be, there is such a graceful expansion of the space and such elegant style to how it all glides that we’re never suffocated. Rather than wanting to leave or at least crack open a window, I found myself eager to stay for longer.
There is nimble choreography to how everyone quips, crosstalks, interrupts and trails off, the kind of film that could be easily mistaken as semi-improvised were you not listening intently to the carefully crafted, detail-packed dialogue. Every aside reveals something, (almost) every joke lands, and every actor is working intently at making every moment count (Joe’s sad, reflective face after he refuses to play music for Pina; Angela’s quiet excitement after Hawk suggests tequila). Even if Rogen is playing a barely tweaked version of a type he does often, he is so good at it that we don’t care, while it’s a pleasure to see Cruz and Norton cut loose, the former especially funny as a sexologist who can’t stop meddling. But as director and actor, this is Wilde’s triumph. This past week, she was the vampy saving grace of Gregg Araki’s Sundance sex farce I Want Your Sex, and now she has gifted us with another excellent yet entirely different comedic performance (nervy and unsure without being over-mannered) and the kind of crackling, laugh-to-cringe couples comedy that many of us have been missing.
It’s too easy to compare this to a Woody Allen vintage – sophisticated pitter-patter dialogue over wine – especially as that has often become more of a putdown (nothing more uncomfortable than someone trying to limply emulate his style) but there are shades of his best work here. Wilde knows, along with Jones and McCormack, how much we all vicariously enjoy watching couples spar, and it’s impossible not to insert ourselves into the night, turning us all into deeply invested football commentators. Joe and Angela’s rehearsed sitcom schtick has become their learned norm, but when played out in front of others, they start to see how nasty and fatiguing it can seem. As the jokes start to sour and the night shifts to something more serious, Wilde and her dramatically experienced ensemble are able to handle a difficult tonal descent without slipping. I was worried how she would close things out – do we go high or low? – but she nails it, a delicately sad final scene that had the Sundance audience on their feet applauding. It seems that the chance to watch a genuinely funny and uncommonly intelligent comedy for adults is an invite we have all been waiting for.
The Invite is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution
