
Backstage at a theater, Charlie, an actor, is preparing for a major performance when his brother Khalid calls to announce that their mother is dying. In shock, Charlie desperately tries to contact his family but encounters practical obstacles. Torn between his duty to go on stage and the urgency of seeing his mother, he is overwhelmed with despair.
When you first hear that there is a series on Netflix where the lead character’s wife dies from cancer and he becomes dangerously suicidal, you wouldn’t immediately assume that it’s a comedy.
The Invitation takes a creeping look at two simple premises: reuniting with forgotten friends and new-age spiritualism. Though one seems a bit scarier than the other, the film heightens social awkwardness to a macabre level that puts an uncomfortable look on when the social taboo of grief is put on public display.
The French-born director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s strategic choice to entrust the interpretation of a conventional, feminine character to a non-binary actor pays off: Corrin’s Lady Chatterley is awkward, edgy, and uninhibited at the same time.
These openly gay Hollywood figures risked so much by being honest about their sexuality: judgment, loss of employment, hate – even violence and death.