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Neubauer Artists LLC
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Four years after the thriller Don’t Worry Darling, Olivia Wilde returns with The Invitation, a hilarious chamber drama dissecting relationships. George V Magazine met with the director during her visit to Paris.
It begins like a Director’s Woody Allen film. A slightly neurotic couple argues at breakneck speed. Then their neighbors (Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton), much happier and more carefree, arrive for a dinner party that quickly descends into chaos. Olivia Wilde, director and lead actress of The Invitation , crafts a delightful chamber drama that oscillates between humor and a dissection of relationships. She speaks about the film with passion and great eloquence. An interview.
There’s a common thread between The Invitation and Don’t Worry Darling , your previous film. Both feature a woman who feels trapped in her life. What interests you about this theme?
Olivia Wilde: I’ve always found the subject fascinating. We are, I believe, the first generation of women to marry for love, to determine for ourselves the place our relationships will occupy in our lives. If you look at the history of women in this society and, more broadly, around the world, it’s an extremely modern concept. Yet, we still have to contend with a system that rests on deeply puritanical foundations, in the United States at least, and patriarchal ones worldwide. There is an undeniable force that, in some way, will always seek to prevent our independence and free will. This is also why there are countless books, films, and songs devoted to this subject. Because deep down, we all grapple with the same questions: Am I truly living the life I want to live? Or am I doing things out of obligation? Did society tell me to get married and have children in my twenties? Have I become the artist I wanted to be, the person I wanted to be? Or have I given up on my dreams to play a role? It will probably take a hundred years for a change of this magnitude to fully take place, and we find ourselves today in a fascinating in-between state. Obviously, this fascinates me. Don’t Worry Darling addresses this subject in a much more literal way, particularly through the idea of confinement, by evoking the manosphere and the world of incels. But for me, The Invitation speaks to something that many people think about without putting it into words. It’s this contradiction in our romantic relationships: loving our partner, but hating what they reveal about us. Am I capable of changing? Is he/she capable of changing too? All of this gives us a lot to think about, and I love to see that, so far, it seems to resonate with the public.
