Actress and filmmaker Olivia Wilde speaks about her new film “The Invite” at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on April 29, 2026. Photo by Camille Bugayong
The Independent Film Festival Boston concluded its annual run at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on Wednesday with a screening of “The Invite” and a Q&A with its director and lead actress.
Olivia Wilde, who starred in and directed the comedy, described it as an emotionally dangerous script that explored the scarier parts of long-term relationships that was built using the personal experience of the cast and writers.
“They say great art is confession, which sounds kind of pretentious, but I feel like I understand it for the first time,” Wilde told the Coolidge Corner audience. “It should feel risky. It should feel revealing.”
Before the screening, Wilde told Brookline.News that aspiring filmmakers should lean into personal and specific stories to cut through the social fabric and make a genuine statement.
“Make the movie only you can make,” she said. “Tell the story that you know, and don’t try to broaden it by making it sort of watered down and palatable to a wider audience.”
Wilde, 42, framed risk and vulnerability as essential parts of the creative process.
“If it’s not scary to tell the story, if there isn’t some element of risk in telling the story in some way, then maybe it’s worth pushing a little further deep in,” she said.
Although she had never been to the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Wilde said she was impressed by the theater’s dedication to its community and its projection of film.
“I don’t know why I was so clueless, but now I’m very excited to know that it exists, and I want to celebrate these kinds of theaters in every city,” Wilde said. “It’s really a testament to the city and the people here who obviously are the ones keeping this place alive.”
She linked the Brookline venue to a national network of historic movie houses that survive in part because of local film fans.
“I think it’s up to people to kind of ask for these theaters to continue existing, because we see that in every town,” Wilde said. “Film lovers are the ones keeping these real, like movie palaces alive that have such a deep history.”
Before the screening, Wilde told Brookline.News the movie is “playful” and she hoped the audience would erupt with laughter.
“I hope people relax,” Wilde said. “I hope people shout at the screen.”
The audience followed through.
During the nearly two-hour movie, almost every scene elicited laughter and a loud reaction from the crowd.
Wilde stars alongside Seth Rogen as a married couple whose relationship is under strain. The two invite their upstairs neighbors, another couple played by Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz, for dinner that turns into an awkward evening about long-term relationships, communication and sexual desire.
Terry Real, a couples therapist, conducted a post-film Q&A with Wilde to discuss the movie’s exploration of “fierce intimacy” and the “unraveling” of modern relationships.
“I feel like I was watching one giant psychodrama,” Real said.
Real praised Wilde’s craftsmanship and the script’s emotional precision and said not a single moment felt wasted.
Real called out a line from the film that struck him as a thesis for his own work dealing with couples: “We forget to remember what we deserve.”
Drawing on relationship research, Real said all long-term bonds cycle through phases, most of which are seen in the film.
“All relationships are an endless dance of harmony, disharmony and repair, closeness, disruption, if you’re lucky, return to the closeness,” he said. “Our culture doesn’t acknowledge that disharmony, and we certainly don’t acknowledge how awful it is, but it’s awful, and that’s normal.”
Real cast the movie as unusually realistic about how couples live and fight, saying it mirrored late-night arguments with his wife, Belinda.
“You’re real, baby. This is real,” he told Wilde.
For Wilde, her goal with the movie is to push viewers toward the uncomfortable conversations they may be avoiding at home.
“My dream would be that they [viewers] would have a scarier conversation at some point in their lives than they might have before they watch the film,” she said. “Sometimes the scariest conversation in a relationship is the necessary one.”
This story is part of a partnership between Brookline.News and the Boston University Department of Journalism.