The Invite

Synopsis:  Neighbors meet for dinner and drinks with unexpected developments. One couple’s marriage is under tension while the other couple’s relationship seems carefree.

Joe hates Angela. Angela hates Joe. This is inconvenient because they are married to each other. Angela and Joe live in San Francisco. He hates his job as a high school music teacher. He also hates the foldable bike that his wife bought him to get back and forth to work. Angela loves overseeing the reno of their apartment. A dinner party ensues in The Invite.

Joe gets home from work and Angela asks him where is the wine? The neighbors are coming over to see the completed reno. Angela wants everything to be perfect for the night. As she arranges a board of jamón and queso for the guests, she sweatily enthuses to Joe that their neighbor Piña ‘is so pretty!’ with the verve of a woman with emerging same sex attraction. Joe groans that they should cancel. Angela tells him they’ll be over in ten minutes.

Piña and Hawk arrive. I know, they sound like characters in animation. About two seconds after they cross the threshold, Hawk informs Joe & Angela that they heard them arguing. Do they want to cancel plans? No! Ha ha! Everything’s good. Great, the night is off to an awkward start. Hawk, you are a fool. Even if the couple you are having dinner with decide to divorce right in front of you, you pretend you didn’t notice. Hey, how about these bread rolls!

Angela is a hospitable hostess. Joe is not. When Hawk asks if he and Piña should remove their shoes, Joe graciously responds that he doesn’t give a f***.  When Hawk looks over the reno, he asks if they are rich. I thought Joe might defenestrate him. But Angela appreciates Hawk appreciating her newly purchased vintage oriental rug. He gets up close and personal with the rug, rubbing its fibers: Imagine the things this rug has seen!

We quickly learn that Piña is a psychotherapist and sexologist. Hawk is a retired fire fighter, open to studying whatever happens to strike his fancy. The two make flirty exchanges, giggling and making asides in Spanish. Joe leaves the room to smoke a joint. Piña asks if she can indulge with him. Because she is not Hawk and because she is gorgeous, he agrees. Hawk does a tour of the apartment reno with Angela. He’s really friendly. Friendly like someone who wants to sell you not just a product, but a new religion. Angela seems blissed out to be interacting with a man who, unlike her husband, is not constantly kvetching at a loud volume with plenty of exclamations of f***!

I will now reveal who the players are in the dinner party… Olivia Wilde (who also directs) is Angela, a woman whose sh**** marriage seems to be driving her to distraction and the pursuit of lifestyle perfection. Seth Rogen is Joe, whose sh** mood darkens his stalled career and marriage. Penelope Cruz’ Piña is a foil, her calm watchfulness and confidence in sharp contrast to Joe & Angela. She also wears a horrible blond wig and – like all of her movie characters’- smoky eye makeup. Hawk is played by Edward Norton with a smug smarminess that made me think of Norton’s reputation as an arrogant jerk. But at least Hawk is seemingly good-natured.

Angela & Joe have a daughter, Maggie, who is at a friend’s for a sleepover. They love their daughter and she seems like the reason they are still together. Also… it’s convenient because Piña and Hawk seem to be feeling them out regarding their receptivity to group sex. Before their guests arrived, Joe was hollering to Angela about how their neighbors’ loud sex every night was keeping him awake. Angela warns him not mention anything, especially after all of the noise from their recent renovation.

The Invite is based on a Spanish film, Sentimental. I wondered if it was better than this movie. While there are some amusing lines (the script is by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones), the tone is all over the place. Sections that go for farce and others that lean into bathos. While the acting is good, the characters never go beyond one note: Joe is a d**k, Angela is bored, Piña is sexy and Hawk is a flake.

I’ve been thinking about flan… All night, Angela has been fussing over a souffle that will be the culinary centerpiece of the night. Risky choice. Piña brought a flan. Hawk says it is the best of all flans. Angela wonders over it as a representation of Piña’s – I guess, desirability? Chill?

The flan made me think of clafouti. Specifically, the clafouti in a superior study of manners when two couples meet up for dinner. God of Carnage by the French playwright Yasmina Reza concerns two children who have a playground fight, and how their respective parents meet up for coffee to try and come to an agreement about how to handle the fight. (One kid smacked the other with a stick, causing lost teeth!)

The hosts serve clafouti, a custard cake full of cherries. As in The Invite, the desserts try to diffuse the tension (yes, sweets can have agency). While the clafouti is graceful in its intervention, the flan is hastily pushed onto stage, depriving the dignified crème caramel-topped custard dish of a more dignified entrance.

In other words, the writing in God of Carnage can do the heavy lifting of its theme* while The Invite’s screenplay leaves its theme** deflated, like the souffle that Angela is not paying attention to.

My advice? Take a look at the original, Sentimental, a film written and directed by Cesc Gay, based on his play Els veins de dalt. Also, I’d skip the flan and clafouti in favor of a nice blueberry crisp.

*civilization’s thin veneer provides no cover for human nature

** a disintegrating marriage confronted by a totally different sort of      relationship

P.S. Be on the lookout for a revival of God of Carnage in the theater. I’ve skipped the English language movie adaptation, Carnage. It was directed by Roman Polanski, who was being sought by American authorities on charges of having sex with a thirteen-year-old girl. He plied her with alcohol and a sedative. In 1977, Polanski pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. He fled the U.S. before sentencing.

Movie Loon’s Movie Review Shortcut:

Grade:  C

Cut to the Chase:  Tonal shifts that muddy any statement about the hosting couple’s marriage. Although I found the suspense of who would say what next interesting.

Humor Highlight:  When we think that Hawk and Angela are talking about relationship choices, when they are really talking about paint choices.