The Invite

Bluesky

Two couples. One location. The arithmetic from that can quickly become excessive but it's the combinations and the combative nature of them that is at the heart of The Invite. If that title seems a little clunky depending on your flavour of English that is not helped by the existence of at least six other features called The Invitation. The perils of extending one are older than Dracula and here of more comic consequence than the welcome mat rolled out in Renfield.

Adding to the numbers that we've got what I think is the sixth filmed version, at various removes, of a 2016 play. Cesc Gay's Los Vecinos de Arriba is perhaps best rendered as 'The Neighbours Upstairs', though this and his own filmed adaptation are the only ones across the French, Italian, South Korean and Swiss versions to exclude either the proximity or (geographic) superiority of the invitees.

No High-Rise this, San Francisco is where we lay our scene. The windows look inward though so after a montage of luxurious dinner party procurement and a disheartened folding-bicycle ride up those iconic hills we're indoors and into proceedings. At the very start there's a piece for two on the piano, but that melody is the first of several attempts at harmony.

Those two couples - Olivia Wilde, who has form for films exploring complicated relationships, Seth Rogen whose curmudgeonly turn has echoes of Walter Matthau - and those sometimes eponymous others, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton. Their script, and there's plenty of it, adapted by Will McCormack (Toy Story 4) were he was one of ten credited writers, and one of his collaborators there another actor moving to the other side of the camera, Rashida Jones.

A comedy of manners, perhaps even errors, of dysfunction within and between relationships. High quality production design, constructing a place that's been assembled itself by knocking through walls, believably inhabited by a cast who all believably inhabit their characters. Wilde and Rogen are Angela and Joe, Cruz and Norton are Pina and Hawk. To go into who they are and what they do is to spoil the story's several twists and escalations. There's enough to say that having received one invitation, another is extended.

It's not solely that it's set, and some of it shot, in San Francisco that recalls the Seventies. There are split screens, a brilliant score by multi-instrumentalist (and otherwise multi-hyphenate) musician Devonte Hynes, and the critical element is The Conversation. It's not electronic surveillance that reveals secrets, but visiting and revisiting statements and circumstances sheds new light with each new angle.

There's discussion of rugs, of diets, among the various dialogues a moment of very strong language that's treated with the hesitation and concern one would expect from context - both circumstance and that this an American film. There's doubtless some potentially significant scholarship in analysing how these relationships and their residence are made regionally relevant. There's also definitely something in its degree of timelessness.

Wilde's direction is assured, there's some gorgeous framing and frequent Rogen collaborator Adam Newport-Berra's camera makes the most of what's in front of it. Though he's plenty of music videos, the somewhat similarly themed Splitsville is among what seems a productive furrow of somewhat-romantic comedies. With such tightly constrained circumstances, in effect a single location, a cast of just four, the work of production designer Jade Healy, art director Sanra Carmola, and on set and costume Adam Willis and Arianne Phillips are all important. There are on screen discussions of rugs and the paint on the walls, but the weight of castored kitchen islands and how and where to hang or not hang photographs all speak to character and effort to create it.

It's perhaps a churlish thing to complain about, but the cast do strain credulity not in their performance but their presence. In other circumstances this would be the line-up for a limited run at some star-hungry theatre on Broadway or Shaftesbury Avenue. Here it's a high calibre for a chamber play, and at times the material seems outgunned. There's nothing here outwith anyone's range, and in many ways that comfort with discomfort works well. In the interests of cosiness, there's a discussion of whether shoes should stay on or off, and audiences who are sufficiently online might be disappointed that they're not Crocs with Disney charms. That's not to suggest that the sense of the familiar is a flaw. We sometimes suggest that they don't make films like they used to, but even without its own repetitions The Invite suggests that there's still graft and craft. If you're offered the chance, RSVP PDQ.

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