How much do I love this movie? Let me count the ways. Is it the ferocious acting by the ensemble cast? The smart writing that is funny and razor sharp, slicing into the heart of relationships? The way the apartment, where almost all the action takes place, seems both large and small? Or the use of mirrors and windows to suggest reflection and looking in from the outside?

It was all this and more, keeping me furiously engaged throughout Olivia Wilde’s 107-minute The Invite. A remake of Cesc Gay’s 2020 Spanish film, The People Upstairs, itself an adaptation of his stage play, The Invite tells the story of a couple, Angela (Olivia Wilde) and Joe (Seth Rogen), whose marriage has reached breaking point thanks to forsaken dreams and disappointments.

The movie opens with an Oscar Wilde quote — “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.” We see Joe teaching music and then going home, travelling on the train with his cycle and then pedalling up a steeply inclined San Francisco road before finally reaching his apartment and promptly lying flat on the floor.

Angela seems to be in a frantic rush preparing to host a dinner for their neighbours, Hawk (Edward Norton) and Pína (Penélope Cruz), who live in the flat upstairs. Joe does not remember Angela telling him about the dinner, which Angela says is only natural as he never listens to anything she says.

Angela and Joe argue loudly about the dinner and their guests with Joe complaining of the couple’s loud and noisy sex and insisting he is going to tell Pína and Hawk about it. Angela has gone to enormous trouble for the dinner, from sourcing a special Spanish ham to make Pína feel at home and preparing a soufflé and loaded charcuterie board to buying a new rug and top, much to Joe’s annoyance.

Once Pína and Hawk arrive with Pína’s amazing flan, things move into a higher gear. Hawk and Pína tell Joe they admire his blunt way of speaking and Hawk praises the new rug. As the evening progresses, the two couples learn surprising things about each other and themselves, including the fact that there are no perfect relationships.

A still from ‘The Invite’
| Photo Credit:
A24

Hawk and Pína also argue but are willing to talk it through. Joe and Angela, meanwhile, have drifted apart and away from their younger selves whose story began with Angela running 12 blocks to listen to Joe play.

There is a special joy in watching the four gifted actors at the top of their game riffing off each other one acidic put down at a time. Wilde is coiled tighter than a spring while Cruz with her platinum blonde bob is all Latin warmth and sizzle. Norton might look boring but he has fire and that monologue about his name is wild making you feel you are brushing against genius. Rogen give Joe, a man who has given up his dreams of becoming a musician and hates the fact he is living in his parents’ house, a rueful brilliance.

The film crackles with rapid-fire dialogue. From Hawk’s no filter comments of loving a “contentious environment” and Joe’s reply, “You hit the jackpot then, my friend” to Pína’s “People forget they deserve more” the dialogue sparkles like a many-gemmed tiara.

The film, which is dedicated to Diane Keaton, who played Wilde’s mother in Love the Coopers, is reminiscent of a gentler version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Wilde has counted the film as well as others such as Happiness, 12 Angry Men and Scenes from a Marriage as inspirations.

The music is delightful, with on-point needle drops from Sade to a sweet 1970 demo of CSNY’s “Our House” by Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell. The fact that the film has been remade in French, Italian, Swiss and Korean speaks of its universality. The Invite can be a perfect date movie, go into it blind and you are in for the pleasantest surprise.

The Invite is currently running in theatres