If laughter is the best medicine, consider the packed audience at the world premiere of Olivia Wilde’s “The Invite” cured 10 times over. The Eccles crowd at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival was laughing so hard throughout the film that it was often difficult to hear some of the dialogue in the hilarious and moving relationship dramedy. And these weren’t chuckles. They were full-on belly laughs, which then gave way to arrested silence and, eventually, plenty of tears.
Wilde’s third feature directorial effort finds her masterfully staging a contained story of two couples in one apartment over the course of a single night, resulting in something like the great-great-grandchild of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Wilde and Seth Rogen play Angela and Joe, a couple who have been married for some time and share a teenage daughter. But their relationship is on thin ice – most conversations devolve into arguments, and cutting asides from each other only gives way to escalation.
Perhaps that’s why Angela jumped at the chance to invite their upstairs neighbors over for dinner, much to Joe’s surprise. Hawk (Edward Norton) and Pina (Penelope Cruz) seem to be the opposite of Angela and Joe. They’re cool, sophisticated and very much in love – as evidenced by their frequent and loud sexcapades upstairs that Joe is eager to address when they arrive.
This sets the stage for an uproarious, deeply felt and impeccably crafted chamber piece that not only serves as Wilde’s best directorial work to date, but solidifies her as a major talent both in front of and behind the camera.
“The Invite” is based on a Spanish play and film by Cesc Gay, with Rashida Jones and Will McCormack writing a whip-smart script that allows the tension to build and release over and over again, with dialogue crackling from one character to the next. Witnessing some of these charged scenes between the quartet is akin to watching popcorn pop – the jokes explode from one to the next, with Wilde, Rogen, Cruz and Norton developing a rhythm that’s so natural you could see them taking this thing straight to Broadway.
But therein lies the danger in a script like “The Invite.” Many chamber pieces get caught feeling like a play, lacking any of the visual language or storytelling that film can provide. Wilde avoids this problem completely, expertly framing each scene for maximum impact. Working with cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra (who also shoots Rogen’s “The Studio”), Wilde uses the camera to reinforce the energy of each scene – who’s mad, who’s embarrassed, who’s on top, who’s falling? Low angles, infrequent use of closeups and a brilliant use of mirrors are a few of the many techniques that Wilde brings to the table to elevate “The Invite” into a true work of filmmaking art.
And then there’s the performances. Wilde infuses the film with asides and glances and quick looks that mean everything, and her merry band of players (herself included) is more than game to present both the verbal conversation happening among the four characters but also the unspoken conversation frequently occurring between the two couples.
Rogen is hilarious and gets many of the biggest laughs as the miserable Joe, who can’t hide his disdain for Hawk. Norton brings more layers than you may be expecting from this suave upstairs neighbor, delivering a third act monologue that had the audience fully enraptured. Cruz, too, proves there’s more than meets the eye to the unabashedly sexy Pina.
And then there’s Wilde, who delivers the performance of her career as a wife and mother struggling to regain some sense of self. She juggles pitch-perfect physical comedy and devastating emotional scenes with ease, dimensionalizing Angela as a woman who just wants to be seen.
“The Invite” is about relationships. But the way this chamber drama captures all of it – love, jealousy, anger, sex, depression, middle-age – is truly a thing to behold. Every time you think it’s going to veer into the trite or predictable, Wilde swerves into something more truthful. More meaningful.
It’s endlessly relatable, sometimes uncomfortably so. And that’s where the belly laughs come from. Not just because the jokes land, but because we see ourselves so clearly in them.
