{"id":678630,"date":"2026-07-07T14:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T14:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/678630\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T14:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T14:19:09","slug":"the-invite-welcomes-heterosexual-polyamory-into-cinemas-its-about-time-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/678630\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invite welcomes heterosexual polyamory into cinemas. It\u2019s about time | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is the chief obstacle that must be overcome in most modern-day big-screen romcoms? Lack of attraction? Misaligning schedules? Or, perhaps, heteromonogamy? If that wasn\u2019t the dominating norm of human relationships, many movie plots would be much swifter to resolve. What if Elizabeth Olsen didn\u2019t have to choose between Callum Turner and Miles Teller in Eternity<\/a>? Or Twilight<\/a> allowed Bella to be in a throuple with Edward and Jacob? Even though both films have fantasy narratives, their predestined outcome is as real as it gets \u2013 a man and a woman (re)marry and live happily ever after.<\/p>\n

For a long time, alternative relationship structures were relegated to fan fiction, undeserving of mainstream fictional representations where conflict and resolution are both inscribed in coupledom. Even the films that challenged mononormativity, such as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, sustain the cautionary tale: opening up your relationship will eventually break it. As a practising non-monogamist, I yearn to see my values represented on screen as something more than a cautionary tale. Recently, the love triangles of Past Lives (implied) and Challengers (consummated) have suggested that perhaps Hollywood itself may be opening up. Then came The Invite, a poly-romcom just in time for the Week of Visibility for Non-monogamy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In The Invite, Angela and Joe (Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen) have raised a child and, in the course of their marriage, lost their spark. Their guests for the evening \u2013 a suave Edward Norton and a dazzling Pen\u00e9lope Cruz, playing upstairs neighbours Hawk and Pi\u00f1a \u2013 seem the exact opposite, having an excess of NRE (new relationship energy) and loud, bed-shaking sex. \u201cWe are non-monogamous,\u201d they say, and the offer for shared play seems like a perfect deus ex machina for every dry spell. The die is cast and the flame can be rekindled, but for a viewer identifying as polyamorous, it doesn\u2019t come naturally to root for Angela and Joe.<\/p>\n

Regardless of which couple you relate to, The Invite is a rip-roaring viewing experience. The film toys with thriller genre conventions, amping up the pressure as the dinner party goes from bad to worse, to then recast it as sexual tension in the same domestic setting. Meeting a new partner is uncharted territory. It\u2019s scary, like inviting a pair of very attractive strangers into your pristine home.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As an umbrella term, non-monogamy describes an array of relationships (including polyamory) involving multiple intimate, romantic or sexual partners, with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. In the US and Canada, one in five people<\/a> have experience with non-monogamy, while the numbers surveyed in the UK<\/a> show a third of heterosexual men and 11% of women as open to having more than one long-term partner. According to Ruby Rare, intimacy expert at the dating app Feeld and author of The Non-Monogamy Playbook, on-screen depictions of non-monogamy are many people\u2019s only frame of reference. \u201cOnly 27% of people outside the Feeld community consider alternative relationships normal, compared with 72% within a community that understands them first-hand. The stereotype isn\u2019t based on reality; it\u2019s based on what we\u2019ve been shown.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the rising popularity of alternative relationships, polyamory can become a testing ground<\/a> in reality, not only on the big screen. Therapists such as Esther Perel, who consulted on The Invite, have highlighted how values such as trust, openness and abundant care often fall by the wayside in mono relationships. Hawk and Pi\u00f1a offer not only glimpses of their shared sexual adventures, but also substantiated reflections delivered with impeccable comedic timing. It\u2019s no surprise that their prompt becomes a catalyst for Angela and Joe to see their relationship anew.<\/p>\n

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That said, the comedy of it all is disarming: fits of bellowing laughter fill every screening room I\u2019ve watched The Invite in, as the comedy of manners transforms into a cinematic playbook for the polyamorous. When Pi\u00f1a explains the meaning of \u201ccompersion\u201d (the joy of your partner\u2019s pleasure shared with someone else), it\u2019s funnily mispronounced by the newly initiated as \u201ccompression\u201d, and when \u201cpreference sheets\u201d are mentioned, Angela gushes about the innate reference to Below Deck<\/a>. Explaining the vocabulary of non-monogamy in such an anti-didactic way opens up space for discussion and the excitedly humorous input can seem innocent and eager. Laughing in recognition is vulnerable and no wonder that particular \u201cha-ha-ha-aaah<\/a>\u201d we all know well is what the director cherishes the most.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help but see a parallel in the way society treats comedies and non-monogamy as \u201cless serious\u201d than their dramatic counterparts. Whether it\u2019s due to the socioeconomic benefits, conditioning or personal preference, monogamy still determines how most of us envision our romantic futures as devotedly coupled. Even more, fidelity and love are treated as one and the same, validated by the compulsory sacrifice of desire for others. Monogamy has great dramaturgy and that\u2019s why it\u2019s the norm.<\/p>\n

Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen in The Invite. Photograph: Adam Newport-Berra\/PA<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the proposal at the heart of The Invite that makes or breaks a couple, nor is the film supposed to be a manual for non-monogamy. Even though the existing contradictions are not magically reconciled, watching it all play out feels cathartic. We laugh identifying with the screen, experiencing the thrills at a remove. With that, The Invite\u2019s elements of comedy and thriller mirror the experience of entering the undeciphered, non-monogamous space, without complying with the conventions of a hero\u2019s journey. Instead of reducing non-monogamy to an obstacle or a fetish in the initiation journey, Wilde\u2019s film depicts it as a space of quiet revolt and shared exploration. And perhaps, a new kind of dramaturgy: the more, the merrier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What is the chief obstacle that must be overcome in most modern-day big-screen romcoms? Lack of attraction? Misaligning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-678630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}