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

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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...
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Johatsu review – poignant account of Japan’s ‘voluntarily disappeared’

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Melancholy documentary follows the owner of a ‘night moving’ business in Japan, helping people abandon their own lives

‘Johatsu” means evaporation in Japanese, and is used to refer to those people who choose to disappear, severing all ties with their past lives and their families. It became a phenomenon in Japan in the 1960s, and intensified during the 1990s as the country struggled with a debt crisis. While some plot their departures on their own, others call on the services of “night movers”: companies that help people vanish without trace.

Following the owner of one such business named Saita, Andreas Hartmann’s and Arata Mori’s poignant documentary surveys the circumstances that drive people to desperate measures. Unfolding like a suspense thriller, the opening sees a man hurriedly get inside Saita’s van, his voice trembling with fear. Unable to cope with a possessive partner, he finally manages to flee. Interviews with Saita’s other clients reveal that, besides financial catastrophes, domestic abuse is often a catalyst for escape. At the same time, the reasons for a disappearance are not always clear-cut, and the film not only lends an ear to the “evaporated” but is also sympathetic to the abandoned, who are left with gnawing questions and no answers.

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