Guess who is coming tonight to have an orgy

Olivia Wilde's third feature film (after the hilarious the hilarious Booksmart and the uneven Don't Worry Darling) dismantles the myth that the original is always better than the copy. Wilde and her team of screenwriters (two excellent comedic actors, Rashida Jones and Will McCormack) imbue the text of Cesc Gay's play, The People Upstairs, and its film adaptation, its film adaptation, Sentimental, with breakneck speed and contagious energy. The story is the same: two couples of neighbors, a single space, a married couple's apartment, and a very indecent sexual proposition. But the script variations by Wilde and her team, as well as the dizzying speed of an edit that accelerates the characters' clashing reactions, transform The Invitation into a neurotic comedy that recalls an era of American cinema, that of films by Elaine May, Paul Mazursky, and Mike Nichols, where the comedy genre also served to address adult issues; in this case, the questioning of marriage and heterosexual romanticism.

Although the first part of the film turns out to be a bit hysterical, Wilde has an ace up her sleeve to steer the work toward a second half in which humor coexists with melancholy: the exceptional quartet of performers. If casting and directing actors are part of the mise-en-scène, we can affirm that Wilde is a gifted director: Edward Norton had never been so funny, Penélope Cruz overflows with charisma (no one says ham in Spanish like she does) and the filmmaker endows her own character with the eccentric energy (and hairstyle) of a young Diane Keaton. The true heart of the film is, however, Seth Rogen, a deeply original comedic actor (and an exceptional creator, as he has demonstrated in The Studio) capable of bringing out a painful insecurity and vulnerability beneath a surface of corrosive irony, a skill only within the reach of the greatest.