As published on Caderno B+

Some films announce their importance with grand images, grand themes, grand speeches and even grander budgets. The Invite does exactly the opposite: it puts four people in an apartment, gives them wine, dinner and conversation and, over the course of 107 minutes, begins dismantling two marriages, several certainties and a considerable number of the lies we tell ourselves in order to keep living beside someone. It is a small film in scale, and that is precisely why it becomes much larger than its premise initially suggests.

Directed by Olivia Wilde, who is also part of the cast, The Invite brings together Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton in a comedy-drama about marriage, sex, intimacy, frustration and that one word that may be even more dangerous than all the others: silence. It premiered at Sundance surrounded by praise and, since then, has followed exactly the kind of path that can become invaluable during awards season, when a film stops depending on its campaign and begins to grow through word of mouth. This is not a production arriving with a loud declaration that it wants an Oscar. It is the kind of film people watch, recommend and then start asking one another: have you seen it yet?

The story seems almost banal. Joe, played by Seth Rogen, and Angela, played by Olivia Wilde, have been married for years and are going through one of those crises that may be more dangerous precisely because no one can pinpoint when it began. They have a home, a daughter and a routine, but they have also accumulated irritation, resentment and very little intimacy.

Angela decides to invite the upstairs neighbors, Hawk and Piña, played by Edward Norton and Penélope Cruz, over for dinner. The excuse has to do with neighborly coexistence and the disturbances coming from above, but it quickly becomes clear that the real noise is coming from somewhere else. Hawk and Piña have sex, a lot of it and with enough enthusiasm for the couple downstairs to hear, while Joe and Angela barely have any at all.

The premise works because it turns sound into metaphor. Joe and Angela’s real problem is not exactly the noise coming from the apartment upstairs, but the silence that has taken over their own home and, above all, their relationship. From that point on, the dinner stops being merely a meeting between neighbors and begins to function like an accidental therapy session.

Piña is a sex therapist, while Hawk appears entirely comfortable with his body, desire and a much less conventional idea of relationships. They represent everything Joe and Angela have stopped being, or perhaps never managed to become in the first place. Little by little, polite conversation turns into a game of provocation and eventually into a proposal that forces all four characters to confront not only what they want, but what they are afraid to want.

At many moments, The Invite feels like filmed theater, and here that is a compliment. Contemporary cinema can sometimes seem so intent on proving that it is cinema that we forget how fascinating it can be simply to watch great actors talk. When the writing is strong and the performers know exactly what to do with it, a dinner table can be just as electric as any action sequence.

The film depends entirely on that chemistry, and the four actors have it. Seth Rogen does something he knows very well, but adds a sadness that keeps Joe from becoming a caricature. He is funny, insecure, childish at times and irritating at others, but there is also a man there who realizes, perhaps too late, that his life has drifted away from what he once imagined for himself. Edward Norton has great fun with Hawk, this apparently freer and more self-assured man, until it becomes clear that freedom can hide wounds too.

Olivia Wilde may have the most difficult task because Angela has to move between resentment, embarrassment, anger, desire and a kind of hope she herself seems reluctant to acknowledge. Wilde directs the film and still manages to disappear into this frustrated woman, without reducing Angela to simply “the unhappy wife” of the story.

But it is impossible to talk about The Invite without singling out Penélope Cruz. Piña could very easily have become just the sexy, exotic woman who enters the lives of a conventional couple and causes chaos, but Cruz never allows that to happen. Her character watches everything, provokes, asks questions, interferes, laughs and notices far more than she probably should. As a sex therapist, she has the professional, and perhaps personal, habit of entering precisely the places other people are trying to protect. Cruz is genuinely funny, effortlessly sensual and, when the film begins to move away from farce and reveal the vulnerabilities behind these characters, deeply human as well.

If The Invite manages to sustain its momentum through the long road to the Oscars, Cruz looks like one of the most natural acting possibilities in the cast. The film itself has already been appearing frequently in early awards conversations, particularly for its performances and adapted screenplay, although there is still a long way to go before nominations are announced.

Curiously, the story of The Invite began long before Olivia Wilde joined the project. The film is an adaptation of Sentimental, released internationally as The People Upstairs, a 2020 Spanish production written and directed by Cesc Gay. The American remake began development years ago and went through several different configurations before arriving at the final version directed by Wilde.

Rashida Jones and Will McCormack therefore did not invent the original situation, but they found in it exactly the territory that has interested them for years. Writing partners for more than two decades and the authors of Celeste and Jesse Forever, they returned here to emotional ground they know well: long relationships, marriage, children, aging, desire, loss and what happens when two people stay together long enough to know not only each other’s virtues, but every vulnerability as well.

That helps explain why the film is not really about sex, even though it seems to be for much of its running time. Sex is simply the doorway into far more uncomfortable questions about what happens when two people who once loved each other stay together after some of the things that originally made them want to be together have disappeared. The film also asks how much of the stability we defend is actually happiness, and how much may simply be fear of change.

Olivia Wilde is smart enough not to turn any of this into speeches. Before filming, the actors worked on the script for about two weeks with Jones and McCormack; there was room for improvisation and some scenes grew out of those rehearsals. The film was shot quickly and was also given enough visual texture to keep the apartment from ever feeling like nothing more than a stage set transferred to the screen.

That may also explain the striking synchronicity among the four actors. The interruptions feel natural, the silences feel natural and the small acts of aggression between husband and wife feel dangerously familiar. There are moments when one character makes a joke and we immediately understand that the line has probably been said dozens of times in that marriage, but once it is said in front of strangers, what once sounded playful begins to sound cruel.

That is one of The Invite’s greatest strengths: it understands that relationships rarely collapse in one single explosion. More often, they are slowly eroded by small remarks, habits, contempt, lack of listening and the perverse comfort of knowing exactly where to hurt the person beside us.

That is why the film manages to be funny, sad, awkward, sexy and moving almost at the same time. Sundance responded to it quickly, critics embraced it and the word of mouth kept growing after its premiere. It is exactly the kind of film that can enter awards season not because of the size of its production, but because people keep talking about it after it ends.

In Brazil, The Invite had a theatrical release and is currently available for digital rental before reaching streaming in October. That will probably be the moment when a much wider audience discovers this small great film and understands why it has been attracting so much attention.

In an Oscar season inevitably filled with epics, expensive productions and performances designed to command attention, it would be especially interesting to see room for a film whose greatest weapon is four people sitting in a room saying things they probably should never say. The Invite seems to be about sex, but it is about intimacy; it seems to be about an invitation, but it is about loneliness; and it seems to be about two completely different couples until we begin to realize they may not be so different after all. Everything starts with neighbors making too much noise, only to reveal that the real danger was always in the silence.