Directed by Olivia Wilde | Written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, based on the film Sentimental by Cesc Gay | 107 min | ▲▲▲▲ | In Cinemas 

The Invite is based on a Spanish film, which was based on a play, and I ask you this: how many Hollywood remakes of European comedies, let alone ones based on a stage play, are any good? That The Invite is better than good, that it may be one of the year’s best films, is a near miracle given its origins.

It helps that it’s the third feature by the remarkable Olivia Wilde, who for my money is batting a thousand as a filmmaker having given the world Booksmart and the unjustly besmirched Don’t Worry Darling. On board as well are the gifted screenwriters McCormack and Jones, and a wrecking crew of a cast who absolutely deliver, especially Seth Rogen. He’s become a king of sophisticated, adult Hollywood comedy, which is saying something from the guy whose historic claim to fame includes Knocked Up and Pineapple Express.

We meet Joe (Rogen) at his work, a music school in San Francisco, He rides home on a folding bike and starts complaining as soon as he gets in the door. Angela (Wilde) is his wife, and she’s busy preparing for a dinner party she’s serving for neighbours, which Joe has completely forgotten about, or maybe he just wasn’t paying attention when she told him about it. What we have here is the model of a bickering, unhappy couple, whose personal crises of age and professional disappointment are overlapping into their relationship challenges. They also have a kid, but we never see them.

Upstairs neighbours Piña (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton) arrive and overhear their hosts arguing, detecting right away the tension in the air. Joe isn’t crazy about hosting this couple at all, and plans to complain to them about the sounds of their loud sex coming down through the ceiling, but Angela will do whatever she can to stop him.

So, what is Angela’s motivation for bringing this other couple into their home? That’s one of the revelations that come thick and fast as we move through this (almost entirely) single location cringe dramedy. The sweat that dripped off chamber pieces like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Carnal Knowledge, and Carnage make the floorboards of this one slippery, but this picture goes is a lot more modern, especially when the, let’s say, sexually progressive couple from upstairs start to indicate where their interests lie.

Further to the point that this movie serves as a shift toward a new kind of story, if this had been made in the ’70s or ’80s the adventuresome couple would’ve been the butt of the joke. Here they’re not without their own issues, but they’re a lot more honest with each other and with themselves, forcing Joe and Angela to face up to themselves especially once the joints are lit and the tequila starts flowing.  I can’t remember the last time in a mainstream comedy the idea of polyamory was treated with such thoughtful respect, and when a picture about the challenges of middle age and longterm relationships was as compassionate.

Full marks to Wilde for the management of tone and actors, especially as she’s in front of the camera, too. In the past I’ve been more a fan of Cruz when she’s acted in her mother tongue, but she’s terrific here, while Norton dials down a bit of that untrustworthiness that’s such a part of his onscreen persona, replacing it with a vulnerability that’s genuinely appealing.

And yet it’s Rogen who outshines them all. His Joe is easily the most unhappy person on screen but also gets the lion’s share of terrific lines, and his timing is unreal. I hope he’s remembered come awards season, because he hasn’t been this good, or this real, since Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz.