The Invite (2026)

Plot of The Invite: Joe is a music teacher in a San Francisco conservatory. He is married to Angela, but their relationship is in trouble. He arrives home to find that Angela has invited the neighbours from upstairs to dinner, and he should have bought wine but has not. She insists that she told him of the arrangement the previous day. He does not want to invite them because of the noises in the night from above, which seem to relate to female shouting during orgasm. But while they are still arguing the couple arrive. They are Pina and Hawk. Angela and Joe have already consumed champagne and she insists that they open a treasured bottle of red wine. They soon get onto the subject of the noises upstairs and Hawk shows them pictures of Joe hammering on their door. But the couple go on to admit that the noise is mainly due to their engagement in sex parties, and much of the noise is due to a lady called Veronica. They go on to suggest that Joe and Angela might join them. Joe and Angela are excited by the idea.

Content: Angela gets down to her underwear once and appears to be on the verge of sex with Hawk. Quite a bit of wine and tequila is drunk over the duration of the evening. Nearly all of the film takes place in Joe and Angela’s living room with views sometimes through windows, since it appears that Hawk has sometimes seen Angela naked through her window and that actually Angela has been aware of being seen. Joe is angry about this voyeurism. However, once the upstairs couple start describing their sex parties Joe and Angela are carried along by the thought of them. They agree to participating in one to one sex with Hawk and Pina, but Joe’s back trouble causes everything to come to a halt. Pina, who says she is a psychotherapist, pronounces on their relationship.

A View:  I generally like films of plays and so this outing fitted into my likes pretty well, although I was put off by the amount of shouting. Despite what some have said, it is absolutely nothing like ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe’. The critics have gone overboard in favour of it and actually from a very limited release it was shown in 1610 screens in its third week. Within it I could see the bones of the play which I am sure is pretty good, since it will play with the audience in ways not available in cinema. So, while I am not quite on the same page as the critics, fine if you would like to see some competent actors strutting their stuff.

Fun Fact: The original Spanish film had already been remade in France, Italy, Switzerland and South Korea.