Olivia Wilde Reexamines Romantic Relationships in ‘The Invite’

“What is the conversation that needs to happen in a relationship to allow for people to really know each other and themselves? And are you holding back on a conversation that could lead to rupture or repair?”

These are the questions director Olivia Wilde said she hopes audiences leave “The Invite” asking themselves. 

In her third directorial film, Wilde (“Booksmart,” “Don’t Worry Darling”) stars alongside Seth Rogen as couple Angela and Joe, stagnant spouses whose recently renovated San Francisco apartment is far more composed than their relationship. 

While visually and tonally distinct from her coming-of-age comedy “Booksmart” and psychological thriller “Don’t Worry Darling,” Wilde’s new dramedy is similar to her past films in its examination of interpersonal connection.

“I’m most interested in relationships, and I think what the three have in common is they’re about a moment of combustion within a relationship and a turning point,” Wilde said.

For Angela and Joe, that moment of emotional explosion occurs when Angela invites their sexually raucous upstairs neighbors, Hawk and Piña, over for dinner. As the free-spirited guests force their frazzled hosts to question their own relationship, frustrations ping-pong off designer rugs and crown molding, filling the apartment with tensions dying to be released. 

Completing the heavy-hitting quartet, Edward Norton and Penélope Cruz star as the promiscuous neighbors. While studded with Hollywood veterans, Wilde said the cast had never embarked on a production quite like this one. 

“We approached this as an experimental process in that we treated it almost like a play, and we shot the film in sequential order on 35 millimeter,” Wilde said. “Shooting in order, shooting on film and having rehearsal were my three rules.”

The made-for-stage structure is no coincidence — the film is adapted from Cesc Gay’s 2021 Spanish film “Sentimental,” which itself is based on the writer-director’s 2016 play “Los vecinos de arriba.”

Alongside screenplay adapters and writers Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, the cast spent two weeks rehearsing and reworking the script. In this period — often regarded as “disposable,” according to Wilde — the team let each other’s performances and growing understanding of their characters inform dramatic changes to the material.

“To have that luxury of being able to evolve with the project and respond to what’s naturally happening was a purely singular experience,” Wilde said. “I think you can really feel our sense of discovery.”

With the film’s setting largely confined to one apartment, fostering an improvisational environment and establishing visual diversity were two challenges that allowed creative freedom to flourish. 

“I really wanted to have a very specifically intentional way of seeing the world, but I wanted to allow for freedom within the world,” Wilde said. “That I think makes the film have what I hope feels like a combination of spontaneity and a strong perspective.”

This balance is particularly evident in the sound design, with overlapping, “Robert Altman-esque” dialogue babbling over a tone-defining score composed by Devonté Hynes, the alternative R&B artist also known as Blood Orange. 

“It felt like the score was the Greek chorus in the room,” Wilde said, describing how the human-like sounds of Hynes’ cello charts played on “the nerves of the characters themselves.”

Functioning as the sole setting, Angela and Joe’s historic apartment is as defined a character as the score. 

The home’s ornate mirrors and cased openings enable shot compositions that show emotional distance, force proximity and feed voyeuristic impulses. 

“When you have a simple story in a simple setting — in this case, one space, one room — the action sequences are all emotional,” Wilde said. “You have the opportunity to really traverse quite a wide range of emotions in order to make the audience feel like they’ve been somewhere.”

Wilde highlighted the talents of her crew in delivering emotionally resonant visuals, noting the informative approaches cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra and set designer Jade Healy took to the single setting challenge. 

“When I approached him with this project and I said, ‘It’s all in one space,’ he said, ‘Well, then we have to make faces into landscapes,’” Wilde said. “She said, ‘We will create frames within frames. We’ll use architecture to reflect the emotional state of the relationships.’”

According to Wilde, every crew member — from production sound mixer Steven Morrow to props master Robbie Duncan — was “plugged in 100%,” a level of complete engagement she’d never experienced before. 

“I get so excited when I can tell that audiences are responding to choices made by a crew as a whole,” Wilde said. “These people are experts. They’re artists. And when you can feel their work, it’s sort of an invisible or a subconscious thing that audiences are picking up on.”

Throughout the six-week production, cast and crew alike found outlets for creative freedom within the technical limitations of time, film and space. This exercising of creative agency is just as present in Wilde’s filmmaking philosophy as it is in the themes of “The Invite.”

“I feel like it’s a really important thing to get across to people that you have agency in your life,” Wilde said. “You have choice. And within your relationships, you have the opportunity to reimagine that relationship with that person you love. If you so choose, It will take a lot of courage and honesty, but it’s a possibility.”

“The Invite” is playing Chicago theaters now and nationwide July 10.