Abhiroop Das
Helmed by Olivia Wilde, ‘The Invite‘ is set over the course of a single, chaotic night, where an unhappy married couple, Joe and Angela, host their neighbors, Pina and Hawk, for a dinner party. What begins as a genuine effort on Angela’s part to know more about the enigmatic couple living next door soon spirals into a broader discussion about love, intimacy, and the longevity of relationships. The dramedy, based on the Spanish movie, ‘The People Upstairs,’ zeroes in on the minds and actions of these two couples who could not have been more different from each other, and the result is a night of revelations and some difficult decisions. By the end, Angela and Joe realize that things cannot continue as they are, and that a major transformation in their dynamic is needed for the night to symbolically give way to a new dawn. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Invite Plot Synopsis
‘The Invite’ begins with Joe, a failed musician leading a disenchanted life as a music teacher, returning home to Angela, his partner, preparing for a dinner. As it turns out, just this morning she invited their neighbors, Pina and Hawk, to get to know them better, and this doesn’t make Joe very happy. For one, he has been equal parts annoyed with and envious of the fact that his neighbors seem to be having really loud sex a little too often, and though he wants to bring it up during dinner, Angela forbids him. Even then, the friction between the two couples seems unavoidable from the first moment, be it in Joe’s increasingly rough attitude or Angela’s inexperience with hosting a dinner. In addition to forgetting to get any wine for the event, she also forgets to check for Pina’s dietary restrictions, and as a result, most of the dishes on the table are off the menu.
As the dinner shapes up to be the most awkward one ever, every attempt made by Hawk and Pina only leads to more chaos, with Angela and Joe seemingly fighting and bickering over every little thing. At one point, Hawk and Pina even bring up the fact that Joe walked over to their door one night and banged on it repeatedly, and when he tries to refuse it, they show video proof. Flustered, he admits to being extremely jealous of their sex life and wishes to know their secret. It is then that Pina, a sexologist by profession, reveals the grand secret. She and Hawk are in an open marriage and regularly have group sex with other people, often multiple at a time. It is the reason why their relationship seems so full of life and intensity at all times, and Joe and Angela cannot help but feel enticed.
When Pina and Hawk reveal that they partially came to the dinner to invite Angela and Joe to these sex parties, the latter couple eagerly say yes. However, Pina then questions their constant bickering and whether it’s a good fit for group sex. Instead, she proposes that they swap partners for the night, and both parties seem to agree. However, Angela gets too nervous before having sex with Hawk, and Joe falls on his back while dancing with Pina. With even that route out of the way, the four of them then sit together for a heart-to-heart, where Pina brings up how couples must frequently reinvent themselves, or figure out when their relationship is no longer working. With this, Joe and Angela are left to contemplate whether they will be happier together or apart.
The Invite Ending: Will Joe and Angela Get Back Together? Do They End Their Marriage?
The ending of ‘The Invite’ implies that Joe and Angela are ready to start over as a new couple, having bid their previous relationship goodbye. The final scene plays out entirely through action and movement, with not a single word uttered as they draw their own conclusions about themselves and each other. To begin to understand Angela and Joe’s final decision, one must start with the staging of the sequence. Angela starts out the scene inside Maggie’s bedroom, almost as if reflecting on her marriage by using her daughter as a lens. Joe, on the other hand, recedes back to a place that echoes his self-destructive tendencies, namely the piano chamber. Fittingly, then, he struggles to play the piano at first, until Angela joins him at the seat, and it becomes a duet.
It isn’t that Joe is literally unable to play the piano at first, but rather the instrument becomes symbolic of his marriage as a whole. It is only after Angela joins him that the rhythm of the scene falls into place, and from then on, the final shot of the film captures them playing from the perspective of Maggie’s room. While the little girl herself is at a sleepover, the scene suggests she is most likely returning to two happier parents, regardless of whether they have decided to stay together or go their separate ways. While there is a possibility of the latter, the former seems to be the more probable path, as it lines up with the advice Pina left the couple with.
From Pina’s perspective, a relationship works best if it has the ability to reinvent itself, whether through the partners themselves or by introducing new variables. In Angela and Joe’s case, the former interpretation seems more applicable, as their piano duet can be seen as a sign of them mutually deciding to reboot their relationship and start over. However, the fact that Angela stops playing the piano after a while, and instead just caresses Joe’s head, can mean that he has learned to live without her. As for the team behind ‘The Invite’ themselves, there doesn’t seem to be a consensus on the ending either, and Olivia Wilde has confirmed that the ambiguity is largely the point, as it best illustrates the many complexities that go into a relationship such as this.
Where Do Pina and Hawk Go? Why Do They Leave?
In one of the many mysteries of the film, Pina and Hawk disappear from the house right as Joe and Angela reach their moment of shared catharsis, and this has both an in-world and thematic explanation. On a practical level, Pina and Hawk likely decide that it’s the best time to end the dinner party and let Angela and Joe sort out their personal matters, but this can also be seen as the duo fulfilling their symbolic purpose. Being an adaptation of a Spanish film that was originally conceived as a stage play, ‘The Invite’ feels, in many ways, like a stage play in and of itself. With that framework in mind, it isn’t unusual for characters to bow out of a scene after their function is served. Over the course of the movie, Pina and Hawk cease to be the object of Angela and Joe’s envy and fascination, and are developed as real people with their own interiorities.
By truly understanding what love and intimacy mean to them, Angela and Joe gain more insight into themselves as a couple, and by that point, Pina and Hawk’s roles in the narrative are already wrapped up. From the start, Pina and Hawk are developed to embody the archetype of the perfect neighbors, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own mixed feelings about their neighbors. Around the halfway mark, Pina makes it clear that she doesn’t find Angela and Joe to be a healthy couple, especially not one fit for participating in group sex. This can be another clue as to why Pina and Hawk sneak out at the end, as it’s possible that by then, they simply reach their tipping point and do not feel welcome at Angela’s and Joe’s home. However, given what we know about them as characters, that still feels like an out-of-character thing to do.
Are Pina and Hawk Real or Imaginary?
Another interpretation for Pina and Hawk’s surprise exit emerges from questioning whether they are even real in the first place. Indeed, outside the scope of this dinner conversation, we do not see Pina and Hawk interact with any other characters or narrative elements. We similarly have no means of verifying their claims of having group sex with multiple partners at the same time, and no one other than Joe seems to have noise complaints about it either. Curiously enough, while Hawk and Pina present a CCTV recording of Joe attacking their door, we see no one other than him in that scene, and there is a chance that it might be a hallucination. For this reading to work, however, a lot of the more practical details of the film have to be suspended in favor of an entirely symbolic reading.
A major theme in the movie is that relationships often need a wild-card catalyst to rejuvenate things, and it is eerily convenient for the neighbors to enter Angela and Joe’s lives just when they need them. It is entirely possible, then, that Pina and Hawk are actually imaginary constructs that Angela and Joe either hallucinate or make up in order to have a rather difficult conversation about their own relationship. With that reading in mind, the entire film and its structure of events can be seen in a different light, in which Hawk and Pina are not even needed as characters.
When Angela first mentions inviting the neighboring couple for dinner in the film, she adds that she’s been discussing this with Joe for six months, and this can easily be interpreted as them slowly preparing for “the talk” about their marriage. In line with that, the dinner can be seen as the two of them deciding to talk about whether they should stay together or end the marriage, and by the end of the film, a decision is indeed made. In this case, Pina and Hawk feel less like characters and more like a manifestation of what the couple desires to be. That said, it is only through this almost divine intervention that Angela and Joe realize that they are not meant to be just Pina and Hawk. Instead, they are their own couple, and ultimately find their own solution through this mess, fittingly, without any help from the neighbors.
Read More: Is The Invite Based on a True Story?
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