The Invite does exactly what it says on the tin. It invites the viewer, as it does the characters on screen, into the comedy and horror of other people’s relationships. Two couple’s live in the same building, and are roughly the same ages, and there the similarities end, as observed when the foursome get together for a dinner that one of them didn’t even know was going to happen. It’s surprising and deft and often laugh- out-loud- funny.
The hosting couple Angela (Olivia Wilde) and Joe (Seth Rogen) are uptight and neurotic, and arguing loudly about the minutiae of co-habitation as soon Joe gets back from work, and continue to do so while the other couple wait outside the apartment door to be let it.
Advertising how honest and open they are from the get- go, the visiting couple Piña (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), state almost straight away that they heard the argument, and in fact quite liked it, leading to an almost immediate move into an evening where the curtains are pulled back on both relationships, and everyone’s innermost thoughts and intimate desires are served up straight alongside the cheese board.
Screened in competition at Sydney Film Festival 2026
Premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2026
Directed by Olivia Wilde
Produced by David Permut, Ben Browning, Megan Ellison
Written by Will McCormack, Rashida Jones
Executive Producers Saul Germaine, Patrick Chu, Shayne Fiske Goldner, Glen Basner, Andy Kim, Alex G. Scott, Alex Astrachan
Cinematography Adam Newport-Berra
Editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis, Anthony Boys
Score By Devonté Hynes
Starring Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz, Edward Norton
Collaborative screenwriting partners Rashida Jones and Will McCormack adapted the Spanish hit 2020 film Sentimental/ The People Upstairs, written and directed by Cesc Gay, which was itself based on Gay’s stage play Els veïns de dalt/ Los vecinos de arriba/ The Neighbours Upstairs, which originally ran in the Catalan language and was a smash hit when it premiered in Barcelona in 2015.
Looking back on the film and knowing it was once a play makes sense, but although the film is set entirely in a gorgeously decorated apartment, it never feels like a stage play, as some adaptions do immediately.
With its Spanish roots, it is fitting then to have Penelope Cruz playing the role of Piña, and this character’s job title has expanded through the versions from a psychologist, albeit with a similarly adventurous life upstairs, to a psychotherapist and sexologist. Contemporary sex therapy culture and wordplay is woven through her dialogue, making her all the more fascinating to Angela, and showing the hand of the ultimate doyenne of podcasts and the psychology of sex, Esther Perel, who was a consultant to the film.
Not only was Perel on hand during the script writing process, but she was also on set during the living-document rehearsals, with Cruz apparently ducking out to consult with Perel to enrich her performance, and it shows. Cruz is pitch perfect.
The film was also a win for the ever- slumping festival market. After premiering at Sundance earlier this year there was a good old-fashioned bidding war, with A24 securing US distribution rights for more than $12 million. Director Olivia Wilde and the team apparently were keen to secure a traditional theatrical rollout, rather than a direct-to-streaming offer that other bidders such as Netflix and Apple might have been offering.
Its is the third feature film as director for Wilde, and it feels much more even-handed than her previous Don’t Worry Darling, probably because she came to this project with her own rules- she shot in chronological order, and had a full week of closed rehearsals. In various interviews she has spoken about how much of herself she poured into her character, Angela, and processed her own relationship history in the process. Jones and McCormack have also said they came away from The Invite with deeper insights into marriage and relationships.
Ultimately the characters all play a part of the dysfunction that can take over any long- term relationship, covering regrets, angst, wild abandon, anger, compulsions, and all the wondering if what you’ve done is good enough, and whether there is anything more to come.
McCormack has described The Invite as about, “.. the heartache of middle age.”
All four of the characters have tremendous presence on screen, and those rehearsals must have paid off as they hand off to each other with great ease and humour, allowing everyone’s narrative to be as important as the others, and with nobody, as in reality, able to comfortably claim that they have all the answers.
