The story concerns with Danny Lee's character as a manager of one of Macau's casinos battling it out on the card table to settle a gambling score with a Japanese gambler played by Chen Ping. He enlists the help of Tsung Wa's character and the battle of wits escalates.
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.
Considering the runtime, I expected each scene to hit harder as opposed to a series of montages and vignettes.
The fun tricks used in the production design and lighting read extremely well on-screen but hardly fulfill their purpose of trying to inject glamour into a lack-luster story with nothing to say.
As an Indian lesbian living in the United Kingdom, the cards are stacked against Geetika from the start.
Gritty and bleak are the best words to describe this film. There’s nothing happy about it.
What seems like such a simple story of survival is so much more than that—it’s a story of family, and of war, and of destruction. It’s painful to watch, but not in a bad way. It makes its audience reflect on their own actions, and in how they are complicit in the sufferings of others as the adults in this film are. Grave of the Fireflies does not hold back from being heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t. It tells a message that needs to be heard decades after the war, and a story that cannot be forgotten by history.
