Oscar voters…don’t forget to RSVP to “The Invite.”
“The Invite,” Olivia Wilde‘s third feature as a director and the most sleek and assured work of her career behind the camera, is an indie film with a lot to say. Oscar voters shouldn’t be afraid to listen. A24, the distributor that bought the film out of Sundance, has a real decision to make. Does it treat “The Invite” like a summer fling or like the awards player it plainly can be?
The second option is clearly, the right one.
When “The Invite” premiered at Sundance in January, it drew an enthusiastic standing ovation, not always a given in Park City, where the air is too thin and too cold for that kind of thing. It then led to a multiday bidding war, which A24 won for a reported $12 million.
An English-language remake of the 2020 Spanish film “The People Upstairs” by Cesc Gay, the film tells the story of Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Wilde), a long-married San Francisco couple fraying at the seams, who invite their magnetic upstairs neighbors Hawk (Edward Norton) and Pina (Penélope Cruz) down for dinner, and the evening detonates.
