1 July 2026

Olivia Wilde’s near-perfect foursome

Seth Rogen is better than ever in dinner-party drama The Invite

Couple-swapping dramas had their great heyday a long time ago, in the heat of the sexual revolution. The overblown Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor was released in 1966, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice in 1969 and Carnal Knowledge in 1971. They’re antiques now, curiosities from another era. Yet, somehow, sexual perplexities remain in 2026. The Catalan writer and director Cesc Gay adapted his own stage play about couples colliding into a snappy movie, The People Upstairs, in 2020. It’s since been remade in Italy in 2022, in Switzerland in 2023, in France in 2024 and in South Korea in 2025. And now here is the American edition: The Invite. The subject’s still a poser, it seems.

The Invite, at any rate, is a treat, not to be missed. It’s directed by Olivia Wilde, whose 2017 debut Booksmart was remarkably energetic, even if it was a high-school graduation movie, a genre to which many non-Americans are nastily allergic. Her 2022 second feature, Don’t Worry Darling, a Stepford Wives-style thriller, was less convincing.

This film, though, is brilliantly executed, zingily scripted by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, and near perfectly cast. Joe and Angela’s marriage is on the rocks. Joe (Seth Rogen, better than ever) is a failed musician, one semi-hit single years behind him, now an associate professor at a dud college in San Francisco, refusing even to touch his prized piano any more. Angela (an intense Olivia Wilde herself) is an arts-school graduate turned frustrated housewife, obsessively redecorating the fine apartment they inherited from Joe’s parents and could not otherwise afford. They have a 12-year-old daughter (away on a sleepover, never seen) but little else in common.

Joe comes back one evening in a foul mood, what with his folding bike and bad back, to find Angela has invited the hot neighbours from upstairs to dinner. They’ve been hearing them have noisy sex night after night. Joe is enraged and wants to complain, but Angela is more excited, asking Joe if he knows how difficult it is for a woman to come that hard. They’re rowing furiously when the couple arrive: a laid-back former firefighter turned Rolfer, Hawk (Edward Norton), and a self-possessed Spanish beauty, Piña (Penélope Cruz, an absolute amazement).

Joe admits they’ve been fighting but Hawk says smoothly: “We love a contentious environment.” So the evening proceeds towards mayhem. Rogen may be playing a familiar enough type here – a stunted bro, a schlub, a superb churl à la Larry David, but he does it so well that his smallest grunts and gestures, as well as his more developed crassnesses, are laugh-out-loud. It is the funniest film so far this year.

“You people were fucking like monsters,” he eventually roars. “Were you trying to win a contest or something?” Hawk and Piña gently explain that they are into sex parties (“four is such a good number, no more than six – we did go bigger last weekend, we were so energised”). In fact, they have come to invite Joe and Angela for group sex there and then. “Me? Both of you?” goggles Joe. “What would the procedural protocol be?” Angela wants to know.

The Invite is a four-hander, all taking place in the one apartment, in chronological sequence: a play, therefore. But it is so inventively photographed, edited and scored, so dynamically acted, you never feel confined; rather, you wonder why, when you can see such a great production on your choice of screen, anyone would ever bother with the ordeals of theatre.

Piña, it turns out, is a psychotherapist and sexologist who cares about women. Esther Perel – the Belgian-American TED talker, podcaster and warrior against bed death – was a consultant for the film and it shows, in its turn to didacticism. Realising just how loveless and sexless Joe and Angela’s marriage has become, Piña delivers Perel-style therapy: “We only get a few chances for meaningful relationships in life. Sometimes we can have a new relationship with the same person. Up to you.” CNM, consensual non-monagamy, is not the only way to go – you can use your imagination too.

The Invite modulates surprisingly effectively into compassion and change: Joe coming back to the piano, to be joined by Angela, the film playing out to Graham Nash’s heartbreaking demo with Joni Mitchell of the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young classic “Our House”. It’s absolutely of the moment. In 60 years’ time, of course, it too will be archaeological evidence.

The Invite is in cinemas now

[Further reading: Jodie Foster is a force of nature in A Private Life]