The Invite

Yup, on a rewatch, it's kinda perfect. First five-star of the year.

Something I've noticed in all of Wilde's ventures as a director is this fascination with the idea of perception. More so, characters who seem to lack observation and understanding of the systems they belong to. In Booksmart, it is the girls’ projected idea of the other high schoolers around them, in Don't Worry Darling it's Pugh's disillusioned idea of the world constructed around her, but perhaps most interesting is in The Invite.

The characters clearly are in a rocky relationship, they’re unhappy, they fight, they're out of rhythm, but this has become the new rhythm. They don't have the self-awareness to understand this is not healthy. It takes a disruption to the system, which comes in the form of their sexually liberal neighbours, to give their relationship the shock it needs. For them to be able to perceive themselves through the eyes of another.

It places the audience in an interesting position, much like a thriller or mystery, Wilde has supplied the viewer with more information than the characters contain themselves. This is happening on a number of levels: the viewer is privy to Joe and Angela's base level as a relationship, who they are behind closed doors. The neighbours come over and suddenly there's a front, which slowly gets eroded over time. The neighbours are then able to see this for themselves, you believe, everybody now has the whole story. But then Pina and Hawk's dynamic completely changes at some point, as does Joe and Angela's when things go wrong. It all amounts to this really interesting commentary on observation when it comes to relationships. Do we ever know truly what people are like behind closed doors? Are we able to understand a relationship more so than the people in it themselves? Do they even know the inner workings of their relationship?

Observation of the self, of the pair and of the other. Perception which seems clear on the surface but is perhaps a reflection of something deeper, or simply a mirage of something not there. Wilde is aware of how layered and messy defying something seemingly as simple as a relationship is. The script lends itself to this as it’s constantly evolving these relationships in front of the audience, but Wilde makes this even more unavoidable through her expert blocking and camera choices.

Perhaps the biggest loss in modern cinema is an emphasis on blocking. As cinema has become larger in scale, it feels as if it's something lost to the sands of time, to the small intimate films with physical and financial restrictions forcing a director to think about the camera more.

Wilde benefits from this film being constricted to, for the most part, a single room. Because of the limits, she comes up with such fascinating, and often jarring angles and movements. She fills the space with so much character, the apartment is as much a part of their evening as the characters. The different locations within the place each serving a different purpose, fully guiding the audience on how she wants them to feel. Their fights filling out large, inviting spaces. The small areas allowing for private moments where masks fade and the truth is revealed. It's genius, every shot feels meticulously chosen.

But perhaps more impressively, the film never feels trapped, like it is stuck in a single location. It never feels like a play (although it would make a great play), it still feels incredibly cinematic in its presentation. It feels fluid and dynamic, never constricting, well, that is unless Wilde wants you to feel closed off and squeezed. It's a fabulous use of camera blocking, truly some of the best cinema has seen in a very long time.

The reflections are genius as they make a viewer feel like a fly on the wall, like somebody trying to piece together the relationship, adding to that feeling of the presentation being like a mystery. But even less directly, the space itself becomes a reflection of the characters, the space telling its own story. The front Angela is trying to pass off as natural in order to impress, and the lived-in space of Rogen endearing the neighbours, feeling lived-in. It's no wonder then the moments of authenticity happen in this room.

The ability to craft these inner reflections, these layered characters who are constantly shifting in front of you is no small task. It's incredibly refreshing to get characters that contain so much depth and modes of being inside them, even somebody like Rogen, who is doing his best comedic Rogen in this film, is perhaps the most layered we've seen him. This is all attributed to the precision Wilde has as a director; thank the cinema Gods she wasn’t forced to director jail, as I truly believe she is insanely skilled when it comes to getting performances out of her actors.

It's no surprise really being an actor turned director, but she might have managed to unearth the best performances from each of the performers here. And I want to emphasise how nuts that is considering these are all A-list incredible actors. They were cast to perfection and each understands their characters so well. Not to single any of them out but specifically Rogen and Wilde herself are magnetic here. Wilde is switching her mask so many times, playing parts on parts, letting cracks slip through every now and again. It's always brought up how difficult it is to see an actor acting and to make that believable; well, that's happening for each of these characters, they're playing parts. We're also privy to how Angela and Joe are without the presence of others, so their falseness needs to be at once believable but also faltering. Truly some fantastic performances.

The film, however, would be nothing without its screenplay, which is up there with my favourite screenplays released this century. I have expressed this as much up until this point, but it’s dripping in nuance and a deep, reflective understanding of relationships and the performance we play in our own lives. It's also not simplistic; it doesn't reduce its characters down to villains and heroes, people at fault and those innocent; it understands that real relationships are messy and ever-changing.

It has actually changed my understanding of my view of the word ‘relationship’. Towards the end of the film, Pina states, "This relationship is over." What follows is the gorgeous closing scene, which is a bookend to the opening (genius!!). In this moment, their relationship as we perceived it has ended; it does not mean that their love is over or that they are through as a couple, but the relationship that we observed is no longer. A relationship between a pair is ever evolving; it bends, it breaks, it gets reshaped constantly, and that's not a bad thing. To live in a broken relationship, though, something which deep down is not working, is.

On top of all of this juicy thought-provoking insight into relationships, it can't be underestimated how funny this film is. It's easily the hardest I've laughed in the cinema all year. The clever wordplay, the double entendres, the situational humour, the plain, straight-up jokes!! It’s just such a funny film and that is not an easy thing to do, let alone have the shift into something so enlightening.

This is truly a smash, a BONEafide knockout from Wilde; she has knocked the socks off my feet and left me craving more.