A Divorce Lawyer Reviews ‘The Invite‘
In her first blog for Walker Family Law, our newest team member, Katie Nightingale, reviews The Invite, sharing how a solo trip to the cinema became a thoughtful reflection on marriage, communication, and the quiet ways relationships can come undone
I’m not very good at relaxing. I find it impossible unless and until perfect conditions have been achieved. The children’s water bottles loitering around the sink, the knife sticking out of an open jar of Nutella (literally, always there), the mountain of laundry to wash/fold/put away. All put paid to me being able to sit down and read a book with a cup of tea, which is all I ever want to do. I also have an office at home. My chap is often dismayed to find me hunched over my laptop when I had promised to go for a walk or just something other than bustle around the house looking for new tasks to complete.
That’s why, last Sunday, I took myself off to the cinema to watch The Invite. It was just me, a bag of Maltesers and a large glass of wine (love that in a cinema) and I was thrilled then to discover the cinema was totally empty. That’s because most sensible people with the ability to relax in their own homes were in their gardens enjoying the blazing sun.
I’d chosen, though, a film about a marriage in difficulties. Of course I had. An overview I’d read described the film as “a sharp, funny, and emotionally honest chamber comedy-drama about a married couple whose tense relationship takes an unexpected turn during an evening with their neighbours.” The “unexpected turn” element was (spoiler alert if you’ve not seen it) an invitation from the beautiful couple upstairs (already hugely bothersome to Joe (Seth Rogan) due to their noisy bedroom antics interrupting his slumber) to join them in said bedroom antics.
The difficulty was that the invitees, Joe and Olivia, fairly bristled with dislike and irritation towards each other, and their sparring fairly fatiguing to watch. Then their noisy neighbours arrive and we have the stunning and surprisingly funny Pina (Penelope Cruz playing a sexologist) and Hawk (Edward Norton as a retired firefighter – not fireman as he likes to remind often). The invitation from their gorgeous polyamorous neighbours thrills and even unites our warring couple at first. But within no time it ends in disaster as the huge fault lines in their relationship are exposed. And fairly brutally. I absolutely loved this film and found it snort-laughingly funny, but it was pretty heart-breaking towards the end, when my snort-laughs turned to quiet sobs.
Pina explains why she and her former husband had divorced – “we stopped having sex, stopped talking, stopped liking each other….”. I felt a jolt of recognition at that as it is a story I hear all too often in my working day. What struck me was how familiar that gradual drift really felt. In family law, people often assume there must have been a defining moment that led to divorce. Sometimes there is. But more often, it’s a slow accumulation of distance. Conversations become practical rather than personal. Resentment quietly replaces affection. By the time couples sit across from me, they are often grieving a relationship that ended long before they made the decision to separate.
Absent abuse or adultery, this is the most common reason for a marriage to end. It’s also why I think films like this one resonate with people. They remind us that relationships rarely unravel because of one spectacular event. More often, it’s the everyday moments that stop happening – the conversations, the laughter, the kindnesses that once came naturally. Those are the stories I hear far more often in my work as a divorce lawyer than dramatic betrayals. It’s a horrible way for a union that started with hope and infatuation to go. The film had opened with the Oscar Wilde quote: “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry” set against a backdrop of old movie footage of Joe and Angela in happier times. That set the scene and I knew what was to come but the gut-punch of seeing it play out was not lessened.
One thing that working in family law has taught me is that very few people arrive at divorce lightly. By the time they seek legal advice, they’ve usually spent months, sometimes years, wondering whether things can change. While not every relationship can or should be saved, recognising those early signs of disconnection – and talking about them honestly – is something many couples wish they’d done sooner.
The overall lesson – don’t get involved with your sexually free-spirited neighbours if you absolutely can’t stand the sight of your other half anymore. It’s just not going to end well.
