The Invite

A stage play refined / Non-monogamy, no shame / Mature hearts only #filmreviewhaiku #moviereviewhaiku…

You get a sense right from the start that the marriage between "Joe" (Seth Rogan) and "Angela" (Olivia Wilde) is running on the fumes of what it once was - and that it has been for a while. He returns home from his mundane work as a music teacher to find that she has invited their neighbours for a continental supper. He has no recollection of this having been discussed, but his grump soon has to be restrained when "Piña" (Penélope Cruz) and "Hawk" (Edward Norton) arrive. Not unsurprisingly, they quite quickly read the scenario and suggest that this maybe isn't the best time, but "Angela" insists that they stay and enjoy some jambon and red wine - oops, he didn't remember to buy any so they are having to use their secret stash! Rather than settle into a more standard form of polite behaviour with their guests, the couple continue to bicker and snap at each other creating the kind of toxic…

Nineteenth Century Irish novelist, playwright and raconteur Oscar Wilde, widely known for his witticisms and observations about life, is generally credited for the following arguably astute advice: “One should always be in love. That is the reason why one should never marry.” And it’s most fitting that those very words should eloquently serve as a cinematic epigraph at the start of the latest feature from actress-director Olivia Wilde, her best work behind the camera to date. Based on the 2020 Spanish comedy-drama, “Sentimental” (released domestically as “The People Upstairs”), this American remake presents an incisive, sometimes-brutal, often-cynical look at the subject of marriage through the eyes of a long-wedded San Francisco couple, Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Wilde), when they invite their upstairs neighbors, Piña (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), to their place for dinner…