The Invite:A Chamber Comedy of Marital Unravelling

Olivia Wilde’s third feature as director marks a confident return to form after the uneven Don’t Worry Darling. The Invite is an English-language remake of Cesc Gay’s 2020 Spanish hit The People Upstairs (Sentimental)—itself adapted from Gay’s own stage play. Where the Spanish original traded in a distinctly Mediterranean flavour of conversational comedy, Wilde’s adaptation transplants the action to a meticulously renovated San Francisco apartment, retaining the claustrophobic single-setting structure while infusing it with a distinctly American neurosis.

Wilde’s directorial trajectory has been fascinating to observe. Her debut, Booksmart (2019), was a sharply observed teen comedy. Don’t Worry Darling (2022), by contrast, was a glossy but narratively muddled thriller that struggled under the weight of its own ambition. The Invite feels like a more natural progression of her style: scaled down, forensic in its examination of social dynamics, and closer in spirit to the conversational agility of Booksmart than the high-concept missteps of her sophomore effort. Wilde also stars as Angela, a performance that captures her character’s frantic desperation to maintain appearances with dagger stares and pricelessly expressive facial reactions.

The four-hander ensemble is uniformly excellent. Seth Rogen, as the curmudgeonly music teacher Joe, delivers what may be the most effective performance of his career, his usual effervescence curdled into weary mid-life disillusionment. Edward Norton and Penélope Cruz, as the impossibly chic upstairs neighbours Hawk and Pína, bring an otherworldly mystique—Cruz oozing charisma, Norton oscillating between sweet authenticity and insincere calculation with his characteristic precision. Together, they generate the kind of cringe comedy that is both blisteringly funny and genuinely uncomfortable.

As a chamber piece, The Invite inevitably invites comparison with other comedies confined to a single apartment. Like The Dinner Game or Perfect Strangers, it derives its tension from the slow unravelling of polite social façades. But where those films often lean into farce, Wilde’s picture possesses a bittersweet emotional depth that elevates it beyond mere situation comedy. The crackling dialogue and crisp pacing carry it through its theatrical origins, resulting in a savagely funny, surprisingly tender study of marital despair that earns its place among the year’s best adult comedies.

Elven Ho