From stage play to Hollywood remake
La invitación is an American adaptation of Sentimental, the 2020 Spanish film Cesc Gay made from his own stage play Los vecinos de arriba, first staged in 2015. The Spanish production began in Catalonia before touring Spain with Candela Peña in the lead. Gay's story has since been adapted in Italian, German, French, Czech, Russian and Korean, and El Mundo counts the new film as the ninth adaptation overall. The remake keeps the original's four actors, single location and single evening.
Olivia Wilde directs the film from a screenplay by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, and she also plays one of the leads. Her co-stars are Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton. La Razón lists the running time as 107 minutes and the production as American. The film premiered at the Sundance Festival, and El Confidencial describes it as Wilde's third feature as a director after Súper empollonas (2019) and No te preocupes querida (2022).
The premise and the characters
A couple invites their upstairs neighbours to dinner to confess that they can be heard having sex through the ceiling and walls. The dinner turns into a long conversation that exposes the frustrations of both marriages. Wilde's character gave up painting to run the household, while Rogen's character once played in a band and now teaches at a school. La Razón argues that nearly every character provokes deep antipathy, so the film depends on its actors, and it singles out Cruz and Norton as the strongest.
Reception in Spain
Spanish critics were divided on the remake. La Razón gave it two stars, ABC gave it three, and El Mundo and La Vanguardia each gave it four.
El País's critic preferred the Spanish original and found the remake's humour thin. Gay himself described the making of the first film in plain terms.
It was an easy film to shoot, not very expensive, with four actors.
Oscar speculation
El Confidencial reports that betting pools already list La invitación as a possible Best Picture contender and Olivia Wilde as a possible first actress nominated for an Oscar for a film she directed herself. Asked about the predictions, Gay responded with a note of irony about how early they were.
It amuses me a little to make predictions when there are two months left, but well.
Gay's original play has also been staged across Spain, and the remake's release on 16 October puts the story on screens in its new English-language form.