I’ve just returned to the city after two weeks home in Australia, soaking up nature’s gift that is winter in the southern hemisphere. As my New York friends braved literal heat waves, I proudly held it down in Sydney, indulging in poolside reads, refreshing fresh produce, and actually good, no frills coffee. While I will always be a coastal girl at heart, there’s something so magical about a summer in the city - recent happenings include Thursday night BBQ at The Meat Hook, strolling through Central Park with a Butterfield Market haul in hand, people watching in WSP, and playing the role of ‘girl who just watched Sex In The City for the first time,’ and making it everyone’s problem.
The Invite, dir. Olivia Wilde 🎞️
Olivia Wilde triumphantly reemerges from director’s jail with her Sundance breakout The Invite, a dinner-turned-sex-party comedy, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf for the millennial therapy-speak age. In The Invite, a couple’s strained marriage is tested when their sexually liberated, enigmatic upstairs neighbors invite themselves over with a forward proposition that propels date night in an unexpected direction.
Wilde’s third feature is a homecoming of sorts for the filmmaker, returning to the stylistic comedy that shaped her early aughts career and finding catharsis in its personal subject matter. The film’s epigraph, a wink from Wilde herself (‘One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry’) instantly sets the tone, eliciting a knowing giggle from its in on the drama audience - personally, I think about Jason Sudeikis (Wilde’s ex) lying down in front of her car to prevent her from seeing Harry Styles (also Wilde’s ex) at least once a week. A remake of Cesc Gay’s play-turned-film Sentimental, The Invite unsurprisingly reads as such, with co-writers Rashida Jones and Will McCormack lending the film its rhythmic neuroses. The Invite isn’t afraid to show the less-than-perfect interiors of its disillusioned ensemble - Rogen, Cruz, Norton, and Wilde are in complete synergy and delivering some of their career bests in a film worthy of their powerhouse talents. In a bountiful year for mid-century modern set design, Angela and Joe’s meticulously staged San Fran abode is the only interior yet to give Charlie and Emma’s envious apartment in The Drama a run for its money - an ambiguous apartment layout governed by near-perfect symmetry and overbearing pastels takes on a life of its own, delivering some of the most satisfying shot compositions of the year. As any memorable dinner party must, The Invite sets the tone with a stripped-down chamber score from Dev Hynes (Blood Orange), delighting in proposterous dissonance at every turn, where tracks like ‘Contentious Environment,’ ‘Flan,’ and ‘I Don’t Eat Meat’ really speak for themselves.
The Invite is thrilled for its voyeuristic audience to sit in second-hand discomfort, drawing them in with an insatiable edge before completely pulling the rug out, literally and figuratively, from under them. While the trailer frames it as a screwball comedy of errors, The Invite is at its core a bittersweet contemplation on what we owe one another in marriage and domesticity (and I won’t spoil any more than that). The Invite takes us back to a land before time, when adult comedies ruled the box office, and cinemas released a dozen movies like this a year, all with a prime sub-two-hour runtime. An instant indie gem, The Invite was made to be seen in a room full of strangers, friends, and perhaps even neighbors, on the biggest screen possible. In theatres.
+ more books, films, and series on my radar:
You Won’t Get Free Of It, by Rachel Aviv
Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, dir. Matt Johnson
Mile End Kicks, dir. Chandler Levack
Proud, created by Karol Klementewicz
Lonely Crowds, by Stephanie Wambugu
The Moment, dir. Aidan Zamiri
On Repeat 🎧 ✨
+ new albums I’ve been listening to on repeat, for your hyperfixation consideration:
New Avatar, Kelela
Sweet Fortune, Ryan Beatty
Visitor, Sienna Spiro
Oh Yeah?, Steve Lacy
Beard, Syd
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