THE INVITE was titillatingly teased (for what felt like years) as a sex comedy of manners, a will-they-or-won’t-they about two couples of a certain age circling each other in an apartment brought uncomfortably close by erotic tension. And while it certainly is that, one of the many pleasant surprises it holds — and a testament to its clever marketing — is that it contains multitudes, foremost among them a nuanced relationship movie for and about ostensibly mature adults.
Adapted from Cesc Gay’s Sentimental (or The People Upstairs, 2020, in either case) by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack and directed by Olivia Wilde, The Invite brings us into the cozy, elegantly appointed San Francisco home of Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Wilde) by way of Joe’s demoralizing commute from the East Bay on what he describes as his stupid folding bicycle. Through this introduction, we see Joe as an ineffectual, disconnected music teacher — he indifferently tells his students to play a piece “a couple more times” as he leaves the concert hall — whose morose ennui follows him home like an odor. Upon arrival, Angela, who has spent the day curating the environment and a menu for the evening, informs him that their newish upstairs neighbors will be joining them for dinner. This sets off an obviously ongoing argument between the two, which continues until the very moment they open the door to the luminous couple in question, Pina (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton).
Discomfiture becomes the appetizer, main dish and garnish before things even kick off, Joe having made his displeasure at the arrangement abundantly clear, an atmosphere made all the more palpable by his seething need to confront the neighbors about their frequent, cacophonous copulation. The introduction of the super-sexualized into the sexless creates a volatile mixture, and it becomes a matter of when, not if, he will begin airing his grievances. But unexpectedly, his ire-clad jealousy, when it eventually takes the floor, creates an entry point into an examination not only of the relationships at the fore, but of the personalities upon which they are built. This includes the countless errors, tragedies, conflicts, compromises and happy accidents that have informed those personalities.
Describing The Invite as I have, one might reasonably assume that this is a middle-age marriage movie; it is. However, and excitingly, there is a raucous comedy within it that provides each of the four leads an opportunity to absolutely own the scenes and moments that comprise it. With a deftness unparalleled in contemporary American cinema, Wilde lets the narrative swerve from hilarity to quiet evisceration to uneasy resignation with deceptive ease, while simultaneously throwing off seemingly effortless, breathlessly funny reactions and mannerisms that would give Lloyd or Chaplin a reason to take notes.
Handled incorrectly, a locked-room scenario like this can become an acting competition. But something sublime can arise when the cast members see each other as co-conspirators rather than adversaries, as they do here. Rather than out-emoting one another, the players are intent on creating opportunities for their castmates, be they for ridiculousness or vulnerability or, most satisfyingly, both. And with Wilde’s acute, artfully executed sense of the cinematic space, it never feels stagy or contrived. Instead, the whole enterprise exists within a deliciously heightened artifice, the elevated, constructed environment that lets us know, even as we are immersed in an ongoing, naturalistic narrative flow, that someone has built this for us, with attention and care, so that we can enjoy it as much as they did, in the making of it. R. 107M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
THE ODYSSEY. Having barely checked in with it, it has been easy for me to ignore or tune out almost all the wrongheaded, racist, classist, classicist noise about Christopher Nolan’s latest, though I still know it’s there. The trolls want it whiter, or older, or less accessible, apparently. I neither understand nor countenance these opinions. Stories don’t get more elemental than The Odyssey; adapt it as hard as you can and let’s see what happens.
Which, in his singular, sometimes inscrutable way, is what Nolan has done. Rendering Homer’s Part Two in the plainest of modern language but assiduously adhering to the setting of the source material, he has created something unlike anything he’s ever done but very much in keeping with all of it.
If one doesn’t know the outline, I’d suggest seeking it elsewhere before viewing.
The thing I like most of all about Nolan’s The Odyssey is that there are moments within it that I’m not sure I like. Sometimes the spoken words strike the ear discordantly, some of the edits feel jumpy and moderne, the hero’s motivations are occasionally questionable, the theme and coda are thrust upon us with Greek-chorus hammering. But knowing what we do about Nolan’s methods and the results thereof, we cannot mistake these elements for mistakes. He challenges us with incongruity of choice and cinematic tics to remind us that even as its vastness and majesty washes over us, someone made this. It’s magical but it’s not magic. And for its “flaws” I celebrate it. R. 108M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
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For showtimes, visit catheaters.com and minortheatre.com.
This article appears in 20 Years at the Playhouse.