The Invite review – A-list ensemble electrify hilarious couples night gone wrong comedy

Sundance film festival: Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton are exceptional in a smart and funny winner about sex, marriage and partner-swapping Not enough people managed to see last year’s self-billed “unromantic comedy” Splitsville , a shame for how tremendously entertaining it was and for what it represents at this given moment. A rigorously well-directed, genuinely funny, relatably messy look at two couples dealing with the maelstrom of non-monogamy, it was the kind of smart, well-crafted film for adults we are constantly complaining we don’t get enough of. I had a similar thrill watching The Invite at its sold-out Sundance premiere on Saturday night. Like that film, it is also about two adult couples negotiating anxieties surrounding sex with other people – and also like that film, it’s really, consistently funny and stylishly directed, made with the kind of care and rigidity that comedies just aren’t afforded now. It doesn’t have the same absurdist slaps...

Dreams review – Jessica Chastain channels rich Americans whose charity comes with strings

The erotic reward for Chastain’s sponsorship of a Mexican dancer lights a fuse that reveals philanthropy’s toxic underside

Mexican director Michel Franco returns with a chilly, angrily intense and deeply pessimistic tale of erotic obsession among the liberal super-rich in Trump’s US who seek to launder and redeem their guilt by sponsoring the arts. It’s a really involving picture which beckons you hypnotically towards the tacit promise of a sensationally unhappy and violent denouement, and of course Franco is unlikely to deliver any other kind. The two final plot developments are shocking, if not precisely surprising, and in fact vulnerable to the charge of being crudely obvious – but Franco certainly gives us a gripping emotional drama, supercharged with toxic sensuality and fear.

Jessica Chastain plays Jennifer McCarthy, a wealthy woman based in San Francisco extensively accustomed to high-end restaurants, couture, private planes and chauffeur-driven SUVs and Franco has an eye for the luxury-porn scenarios familiar from TV dramas such as Succession and The White Lotus, though with a more dyspeptic and fearful edge.

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