If everything looks perfect and we want for nothing - why are we so miserable? Ahh the lament of the bored urban Bourgeois. Unfulfilled in his art and her home, living on what’s left of a family fortune and exhausted dreams.
Chekov, Mann, Zweig, Wharton, Fitzgerald, Rohmer, Bergman, and Allen have all mined similar territory for comedies and dramas of manners, lust and romance. Wilde’s The Invite is the first film that really nails the particularly modern forms of neurasthenia that plague our downwardly mobile professional class.
These types are more familiar in decadent European settings because that is their native land. But American Millennials seem particularly vexed that life’s realities significantly diverge from our youthful expectations.
The Invite succeeds precisely because it’s honest about its anxieties. It gives real bite and laughs to the humor (and it is very funny) but also to the emotional depth of the performances.
One of the best of the year. Wilde is back!