The ads for The Invite are a bit coy on its subject matter, but that’s not because this is some high-concept would-be brain melter like Olivia Wilde’s last film, the poorly received Don’t Worry Darling. It’s no spoiler to say that it’s about what you think it’s about: a bickering couple (Wilde and Seth Rogen) who are approached by their sexy and mysterious upstairs neighbours (Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz) about the idea of having a group sexual experience. Or, if the gobsmacked bickerers would prefer, just a swap of partners on this first night.

How it’s about it may be the surprise. All of these actors are adept at comedy, though perhaps only Rogen is identified exclusively with that genre. What you might not see coming is the depths of sadness that are also embedded in the film: sadness over life’s disappointments, sadness over actual tragedy, sadness over living in a marriage where you’re steadily realising you revile the other person. That the film hits this range of tones without belabouring any of them, all within the walls of one fancy apartment and within the parameters of just four characters, is what makes it a minor triumph.

Angela (Wilde) has invited Pina (Cruz) and Hawk (Norton) over for dinner, but it hardly feels like the right night for Joe (Rogen). His back is hurting from riding his fold-up bike throughout San Francisco, on his way home from his disappointing job teaching untalented musicians at a conservatory (he’s a failed musician who was once in a promising band), and all he wants to do is lie on the floor until his back feels better. However, he appears to have forgotten that tonight was the night of the dinner – or did she never tell him? In any case, we know he forgot to pick up the wine, because he can’t receive text messages while riding a fold-up bike.

Irrespective of any logistical details, Joe is wary about the engagement for a shared reason Angela seems to have momentarily forgotten. Namely, the floors in this building are very thin, and the sheer volume of Hawk and Pina’s animal lovemaking is insensitive neighbouring at best, outright rude at worst. Joe and Angela’s young daughter, who is away tonight at a sleepover, can hear every last moan and grunt, and might be starting to figure out what they are.

When Joe says he’s going to mention it to them, Angela gets a wild look in her eyes, making him promise not to do so. She’s also purchased a few new pieces of décor – that’s how she passes the time after giving up her career – and enough cheese to feed the French army, so she’s clearly got something invested in this beyond just neighbourly hospitality.

It’s more like hostility coming from Joe when Pina and Hawk arrive, and the guests, in their frank manner of speaking, admit that they heard the two hosts fighting when they arrived at the door. Having established a baseline of honesty, Pina and Hawk begin to draw the flustered pair out of their shells, flirting but never crossing the line, until the big reveal: they are swingers who have orgies upstairs, and are wondering if Joe and Angela might be keen.

The potential acceptance of such an offer – such an invite – among dorky noobs is the stuff of great comedy. There’s a dizzy incomprehension that takes over Wilde and Rogen, one that mixes their obvious excitement and curiosity with the deference owed to a partner. Neither wants to be too quick to accept, but their inhibitions may have been lowered enough, and the foundation of their relationship shaken enough, that they might be willing to do go forward with something they hadn’t even known was a possibility until 15 minutes ago, and is surely outside what they thought was their comfort zone.

Rogen has always played a schlub whose shtick involves surprise over the fact that anyone would like him. He’s made a career of being honest about his limitations as a romantic leading man. And so the real find here is Wilde, a more traditional beauty who is tongue-tied by the attention of the other couple. She’s a whirling dervish of goofy expressions, stumbles and tumbles as she tries to get out complete sentences. If physical comedy were a test, Wilde aces it.

The Invite might not work so well if not for the dimension Norton and Cruz bring to their roles. She’s in the more traditional archetype of “European temptress,” but she takes it beyond that with her professional work as a therapist/sexologist. He’s the one who strikes us as a bit more unusual in that he’s a retired firefighter, not a more traditionally self-actualised type who would interest someone like Pina, or so we would assume. Then again, the language of love, and of physical lovemaking, exists outside such assumptions.

It should be clear that not everything is going to go as planned, or according to the new plan they just formulated. And here’s where The Invite goes from a series of laugh-out-loud bits of delightful awkwardness into dark caverns of real pain. The new mode doesn’t spoil the old mode, it just gives the whole experience greater depth, and a greater sense of universal truth. Specifically we are invited to contemplate how marriage changes two people who were once each others’ insatiable lovers, but may now be no better than reluctant business partners. And don’t worry, the dysfunctions aren’t saved only for Joe and Angela. Pina and Hawk might not always be as enlightened as they think.

The Invite is from a script by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, who are also actors and who also co-wrote Toy Story 4, though it’s a remake of the 2020 Spanish film The People Upstairs. But Wilde is the one whose partnership with Jason Sudeikis was widely gossiped about in the public sphere, so we can’t help but see this as her elegy for that failed relationship, maybe more from a perspective of sorrow, if Don’t Worry Darling was more from the perspective of anger.

However, The Invite is more than any one thing. Just as it is equally a comedy and a drama, it isn’t willing to say that a couple’s relationship is definitely over just because they bicker and resent each other, and haven’t truly made each other happy for years. Just as the other couple’s relationship isn’t any less strong because it is founded on sleeping with other people. Life is complicated, happiness is complicated, and the surest way to ruin either is to stick to one fool-proof set of rules. The thing that isn’t complicated is appreciating The Invite, since it’s constructed wholly from little nuggets of truth.

 

The Invite is currently playing in Australian cinemas.