Sleepers (1996)

I have never downed a bucket of popcorn so fast.

“Thanks, I hate it” is a phrase that popped in my head while watching The Invite.  For the first ten minutes, I didn’t really get it.  Then for another twenty or thirty minutes, I thought it was expertly made, but ultimately didn’t resonate.  Then that sentiment went out the window, and I was blown away.  The Invite is phenomenal. 

A remake of the Spanish film Sentimental, The Invite debuted at Sundance this year, before being picked up by A24 and released in the middle of July. Any hopes of this movie becoming a popular hit in the same manner as The Drama and Obsession were probably dashed by being released in the middle of a busy summer movie season, most notably a week before The Odyssey took the world by storm. But if you can, make the effort to see this movie. It’s worth it.

Sentimental itself was based on a play, and that comes across in The Invite. Minus a brief cameo by the main character’s students well before the title card drops, there are only four characters in the entire film, and it takes place in one house in only a handful of rooms. Each room is disorganized in some way, whether it be dishes all over the kitchen, or a wall that desperately needs new paint, or a bathroom filled with pill bottles, reflecting the dysfunctional nature of the relationship at the core of the film.