Actress-turned-filmmaker Olivia Wilde’s nearly decade-old directing career has thus far been admirably unpredictable, zig-zagging from zany coming-of-age comedy to horror-tinged sci-fi to, now, domestic farce. One thing has remained the same throughout all the pivoting, though: her fascination with characters aching to loosen themselves from the shackles of an unsatisfying life. In Booksmart (2019), Wilde’s acclaimed-but-underseen debut, a pair of goody-two-shoes high-school seniors decides they ought to try out party girlhood before it’s too late, suddenly regretful over how many weekend nights were spent excessively hunched over desks to guarantee 4.0s. In Don’t Worry Darling (2022), a clobberingly unsubtle remix of The Stepford Wives (1975) whose much-gossiped-out behind-the-scenes drama stole its thunder, a young homemaker living in what may or may not be the early ’60s becomes mountingly suspicious that there may be no escape from her seemingly idyllic life.

Wilde’s latest, and best, movie, The Invite, whittles down her pet theme into its most irresistible, affecting form yet. A comedy about the messiness of marital malaise, it’s a millennial answer to Paul Mazursky’s classic swingers romp Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). (Doing double duty as one of The Invite’s quartet of leads, Wilde gives a performance of a piece with Natalie Wood’s in Bob & Carol: appealingly game, albeit slightly overstudied-feeling compared to her co-stars.) Almost entirely restricted to a single setting — something that also unearths memories of another seminal ’60s marriage movie, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) — the film has a bare-bones premise. Angela (Wilde), who’s married to Joe (Seth Rogen), invites the comparatively poised couple upstairs, Hawk and Pína (Edward Norton and Penélope Cruz), over for dinner. 

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Header image courtesy of A24