THE STORY – Actress-turned-reluctant homemaker Rose, and her agent husband Sammy host a small party to impress a star client, but tensions simmer beneath the glamorous façade when an elderly woman unexpectedly arrives, claiming the house was once hers.
THE CAST – Walton Goggins, Elizabeth Reaser, Rufus Sewell, Pedro Pascal, Eva De Dominici & Lois Smith
THE TEAM – Nadia Conners (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 97 Minutes
Rose (Elizabeth Reaser) seemingly has it all: A successful talent agent husband, Sammy (Walton Goggins), and an adorable young son, Wilder (Roland Rubio), a beautiful home in the Hollywood Hills, and a knack for throwing fabulous parties. Today, however, on the day of a big party she and Sammy are throwing for Sammy’s biggest client, Gerald (Rufus Sewell), she’s having trouble keeping it together. Party prep hasn’t gone exactly as planned, Wilder keeps distracting her, and the stress on the couple is causing friction between her and Sammy. She then finds herself face to face with visions of her past and future selves: Delia (Eva De Dominici), a hot young starlet working with Gerald, and Helen (Lois Smith), an elderly woman who believes Rose’s house is hers. This throws Rose into a bit of an existential crisis as she tries to keep the party going while ensuring Helen’s safety away from the guests. And then, as if on cue, her ex Lucien (Pedro Pascal) shows up. Will Rose be able to get Helen and herself safely through the night?
First-time writer/director Nadia Conners initially conceived of “The Uninvited” as a play, and while you can sense its stage origins in the style of the dialogue and the limited locations around one house, Conners has turned it into a film that fits right in with Buñuel’s slightly surreal comedies of manners. Instead of never being able to leave a dinner party, Rose is barely able to attend hers, perpetually preparing and providing for both her invited and uninvited guests. While Helen’s presence isn’t as mystical as it might have been, she still serves the function of the mysterious outsider who somehow knows a bit too much to be there completely by accident. Treating this kind of story in a more naturalistic way puts the focus on character more than theme, though, and while Conners has written some compelling characters, she cuts some of their arcs short in the film’s last act, choosing to focus on thematic resonance instead. It’s a sneaky little bait-and-switch, and it almost works. Unfortunately, the themes of womanhood and selfhood don’t come into focus until too late, causing the film to end on a whimper as opposed to a bang, an ellipsis as opposed to a period.
Perhaps the most disappointing thing about the film’s shift in focus is that every single cast member tears into their role, delivering fully lived-in performances of characters who occasionally come across as half-baked. Some, like De Dominici, are able to add depth with subtle looks and body language. Others, like Goggins, eventually flounder when the script abandons them, seemingly unable to get a good grip on their slippery characters. Thankfully, Reaser and Smith anchor the film with striking emotional clarity. Rose and Helen are the most fleshed-out characters by far, and the two actresses do beautiful work bringing them to life. Smith has been playing parts like this for years now, but she taps into something special here as Helen vacillates in and out of lucidity. The way the emphatic force of her assurance melts into frightened confusion will be all too familiar to anyone who has dealt with those affected by dementia. Reaser, long one of the most compelling actresses in Hollywood, nails every facet of Rose’s character. Her charisma and sphinx-like features make her endlessly fascinating to watch, and the knottier Rose’s situation becomes, the better Reaser gets, attuning herself to Rose’s complexities and becoming one with them. The code-switching Rose does, turning on and off parts of her personality depending on who she’s with, offers a lot of things for Reaser to play, and she fully commits herself to all of them. She never loses Rose’s center, though, ensuring that the character always stays grounded even when she feels completely at sea in her own home.
To the extent that the film works, it’s largely because of Reaser’s tight command over the screenplay’s many shifts in tone. Conners has written some great dialogue that captures in painstaking detail a distinctly Los Angeles style of bourgoisie – the kind of upper-class bohemians who would have an aura photographer at a catered garden party and leave their kid in their bedroom with the nanny. Conners stitches together a fascinating tapestry of modern-day Angelenos that jumps around in tone from the comedic to the tragic, from the ironic to the honest. It’s largely meant seriously, but there are enough shots fired at this specific brand of Hollywood elite that you could call it a satire, and you wouldn’t be wrong. For most of the film’s runtime, Conners does a good job balancing these different tones, with a lot of help from Reaser. But when it comes time to tie everything together in the film’s last act, sentimentality gets the better of her, and what was clear becomes kind of muddy. Conners’s way with dialogue usually helps her, but the sharp specificity of her writing melts away in the last act, leaving behind a bland aftertaste that sours what came before.
