The Invite: Discomfort is served in Olivia Wilde’s bittersweet sex comedy

• Reviewed from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival

After a coming-of-age story of friendship (Booksmart) and a retro dystopia (Don’t Worry Darling), the third feature from Olivia Wilde scales down to a marital sex comedy that takes place in one apartment, on one night. The Invite puts the spotlight entirely upon an ensemble of four quite different actors – Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, Edward Norton, and Wilde herself – whose interplay yields an entertaining, at times crackling evening that tries for a bittersweet note.  

It might happen one night, but Joe and Angela, the hosts in this well-appointed Bay Area apartment, are drowning in their history. Affectionate bickering has long since turned brittle, and with their teenage daughter away, there’s no escape from Joe’s self-pity, as a former indie rock frontman turned music teacher. Meanwhile all Angela’s frustrations are channelled, it seems, into redecorating, and now, frantically, into the dinner party she’s had to spring on sad-sack Joe. 

The upstairs neighbours, Pina (Cruz) and Hawk (Norton), are part of that history: for months, Joe and Angela have heard their loud, joyful sex. It’s a nightly reminder of their own moribund bedroom habits, and Pina and Hawk’s arrival at their door – svelte and neatly dressed next to their frazzled hosts – sets up the dynamic of the strangers wondered about from afar, suddenly before you in person. Joe is more annoyed than impressed, and his attempts to complain to them, repeatedly averted by Angela, are the encounter’s initial source of tension. (The film’s durable source is a Spanish movie, Sentimental (2020), whose director Cesc Gay adapted from his own play, and which in turn has yielded at least four other film adaptations internationally.) 

What follows moves through a few phases, starting with the pleasure of the prickly getting-to-know-you, with a grudging Joe trying to chip away at the handsome facade before him, while Angela essentially fans out. The screenplay by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack feels especially tailored to Rogen’s tendencies toward portraying sarcastic characters who are down on themselves, and it’s amusing seeing him come around when he and Pina peel off to smoke a joint. But Wilde taps a nice, slightly farcical energy as the evening evolves, all aflutter over Hawk, an ex-firefighter, as well as Pina, whose (overheard) orgasms fascinate Angela.

All this is a prelude to when the film gets cooking with the revelation that Pina and Hawk have even busier sex lives than imagined and are not just there to have cheese and wine. With their friendly indecent proposal on the table, Cruz embraces her role as a therapist (professional and now situational) with a nice mix of serenity and toughness, while Norton gets to splutter a bit (after suavely showing off their bond with schoolboy Spanish). The biggest joke, though, is really Joe and Angela’s evident relief that the couple upstairs are not simply a couple like themselves but with better sex – they’re at another level. 

It’s to the credit of The Invite that this is not an entirely predictable story of the joys or the spoils of letting loose sexually. Without giving away the final act, it’s worth recalling how the movie opens: with the sounds of Joe noodling on a piano and chuckling with Angela, a moment tinged with a certain melancholic nostalgia. One eventful evening with the neighbours can’t banish the hurt that had already taken root in the hosts (though I do wish we’d learn a little more about Angela, not in relation to Joe, and not just in terms of a plot reveal). 

If the story ends with a kind of reality check on its own premise, it’s only fair to do the same for the ambitions of a film that was the object of a Sundance bidding war and that closes with the dedication “For Diane” [Keaton]. Wilde, her DP Adam Newport-Berra, and production designer Jade Healy admirably keep the apartment from feeling stage-bound, playing with staging scenes in depth of field and framing around doorways and windows. But there’s no real mystery or risk akin to one frequent critical reference point from over half a century ago, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, nor do the stakes feel like they extend beyond this apartment into any broader reflections.  

But sometimes it’s diverting enough to see four stars at work for an evening, which is exactly what The Invite did on a Saturday night at Sundance’s Eccles Theatre and perhaps other rooms in future.