Opening Night: The Invite
Nothing is off limits in Olivia Wilde’s (Booksmart, Festival 2019) taboo-smashing third feature where two San Francisco couples meet for a casual get-to-know-one-another dinner but instead find themselves traversing surprising boundaries of intimacy and relationships. Penelope Cruz, Olivia Wilde, Edward Norton, and Seth Rogen star.
Description
Nothing is off limits in Olivia Wilde’s (Booksmart, Festival 2019) taboo-smashing third feature where two San Francisco couples find themselves traversing surprising boundaries of intimacy and relationships. When his wife Angela (Wilde) informs Joe (Seth Rogan) that she has invited their upstairs neighbors Pina (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton) to dinner, he smolders with resentment. In an outburst of passive-aggressive revenge, he seizes the opportunity to tell them how disruptive their frequent lovemaking is. What ensues in Will McCormack and Rashida Jones’s adaptation of a 2020 Spanish film is tremendously funny and poignant as the straitlaced Angela and Joe find themselves surprised and challenged by the far less traditional sexual mores of Pina and Hawk. All four actors are tremendous as the banter ranges from back trouble to butt plugs, but at its heart, this smart and hilarious movie is about the immense challenges of love and sex and how to set the groundwork for repair. —Rod Armstrong
Biographies
After starting her career as an actor, Olivia Wilde has branched out into producing, writing, and directing. She made her writing and directing debut with the short Free Hugs (2011) and her narrative directing debut with Booksmart (Festival 2019), for which she won the Film Independent Spirit Awards’ Best First Feature prize. That was followed by Don’t Worry Darling (2022). The Invite is her third feature.
