Olivia Wilde's 'The Invite' Hailed as One of the Year's Best Films

When a film gets so-called "buzz" it means you walk into the cinema with sky-high expectations and you're then either sorely disappointed or pleasantly surprised it lives up to the hype.

The Invite, directed by Olivia Wilde, is getting its lion share of buzz at the moment and is already hailed as one of the best films released this year. Fortunately, the excitement is not in vain.

With horror and superheroes dominating the cinema landscape it's refreshing to have a film that is grown up, contemporary, relatable, challenging and really funny.

"One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry": The quote from Oscar Wilde which opens the film serves as a perfect appetiser for what is served on screen.

We meet Joe (Seth Rogen) as he comes back after another numbing work day, and exhausted, flops on the floor of his newly renovated heritage San Francisco apartment in excruciating back pain.

He spots the dining room table with a lavish charcuterie plate and greedily reaches for it when his wife Angela (Olivia Wilde) berates him to leave it alone as their dinner guests are about to arrive. A dinner party he knew nothing about. Oh, and he forgot the wine.

The misunderstanding explodes into fireworks of bickering and blame.

Angela, as tight and tousled as her hair and her buttoned-up shirts, has invited her effortlessly cool upstairs neighbours Hawk and Piña (Edward Norton, Penélope Cruz) to dinner (although there is very little food or drink consumed when Piña announces she doesn't eat meat, cheese or crackers).

As soon as they enter, the air immediately shifts. Hawk is a firefighter and Piña is a sexologist; between them they have no filter.

They ask impertinent questions, have private conversations in Spanish in front of their hosts and pry into their rooms and possessions.

Angela is desperate to impress, while a seething Joe sees it as an opportunity to complain about their neighbour's nightly loud lovemaking.

As the night progresses the sexually adventurous Hawk and Piña turn the evening into a very different kind of invite, which peels away the emotional barriers of their hosts and possibly awakens their stagnant sexuality and intimacy.

Wilde really hits her stride and finds a confident voice in her third film as director.

While her impressive 2019 debut Booksmart, a joyous girls-just-have-fun high school comedy, made her a critics' favourite, she stumbled with her next film Don't Worry Darling, an ambitious sci-fi thriller which was visually rich but emotionally hollow (and the on-set tabloid headlines of her relationship with leading man Harry Styles didn't help).

Even though The Invite is firmly framed with an American lens you can sense the film has a strong international pedigree.

Screenwriters Will McCormack and Rashida Jones (actor alum from Parks and Rec and The Office) adapted the screenplay from writer-director Cesc Gay's award-winning 2021 Spanish film Sentimental (released internationally as The People Upstairs) which in turn was based on Gay's 2016 play, Los Vecinos De Arriba.

Inspired by the brilliant films of Mike Nichols — particularly his famed adaptation of Edward Albee's masterful play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — with two couples, one set and a smart script, the film is shot in 35mm to capture a nostalgic and authentic aesthetic.

And if it seems Wilde is channelling a Diane Keaton-quirkiness in her performance, she is. The film is dedicated to Keaton, who Wilde considers one of her biggest mentors and inspirations (the two worked together in the little seen 2015 holiday film Love the Coopers).

As many actors-turned-directors, Wilde excels when she is in service to those in front of the camera and their performances, which is key to this film.

She shot the film theatre-style, in sequence, and workshopped the script for two weeks with the actors who were allowed to shift, shape, improvise and mould their own characters.

The brilliant Norton completely improvised a monologue in the second half of the film revealing the darker depths of his seemingly don't-care attitude.

With a history of Spanish auteur Almodovar's films Cruz slips easily into this brilliant quartet as the free-spirited bohemian Piña but the revelation was Rogen's performance, as he fires constant witty and sharp-tongued asides.

I haven't been a fan of Rogen's lazy stoner-dude persona in films like Pineapple Express and Superbad, but his portrayal of the smart-mouthed Joe who once aspired to be a indie rock star and is now a bored music teacher is filled with palpable self-loathing and low self-esteem.

Similarly, Wilde's Angela is also crippled with disappointment as a once-aspiring photographed but now primarily a stay-at-home mum (their only child is away on a sleepover).

When Piña says "People forget they deserve more", it rings as a warning as well as a sign of hope which could easily be the keystone of the film and keeps us connected to the characters until the end.

"We wanted to investigate what happens when two people mistake intimacy for melding — the idea that 'we're still married, we've merged our lives, therefore we're intimate' when really they couldn't be further apart," Wilde said recently at a press conference in Los Angeles.

"I'm fascinated by the idea of people who are technically in a relationship but are actually complete strangers, who haven't continued to acknowledge their individuality — that autonomy, that responsibility for one's own happiness. Now, at 42, having lived through several different kinds of relationships, it's something I really care about, particularly for women.”