In her delightful 2017 directing debut, Booksmart, Olivia Wilde brought insouciant freshness and a sensibility both sweet and dirty to the well-worn coming-of-age comedy. That kind of originality was precisely what her slick but hollow second feature Don’t Worry Darling lacked, though the 1950s-set feminist freakout was at least admirably ambitious. In Wilde’s more assured third outing as director, The Invite, the elements are closer to alignment even if you can hear the gears cranking as it shifts from comedy of bad manners into scalding pathos.
When it’s cooking, which is most of the run time, this is a smart, sophisticated and incisively acted adult entertainment that savages the crumbling institution of marriage, dangles the promise of sexual rescue and then brings the walls crashing down in a bitter reckoning that seems irreversible — until a window of hope and healing gets cracked open. That closing note is so lovely,…
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.imdb.com ’
ADVERTISEMENT
