Director: Nadia Conners
Writer: Nadia Conners
Stars: Elizabeth Reaser, Walton Goggins, Lois Smith
Synopsis: A stranger crashes a party, sparking a comedy of errors, and a reordering of life.
Nadia Conners’ debut feature, The Uninvited, is a chamber piece set in the Hollywood Hills where three women each dissect their relationship to performance, age, and motherhood within the confines of what is expected of an actress. The gendered nature of their contributions to intransience inside a machine that celebrates youth as achievement. Rose (Elizabeth Reaser) is preparing for a post-shoot celebration for her husband Sammy’s (Walton Goggins) most celebrated client at his artist management firm. The director, Gerald (Rufus Sewell), who has known Rose and Sammy for decades is the special guest at the garden party; but it is an uninvited and unknown guest, Helen Hale (Lois Smith), whose presence sparks a mental reckoning for Rose who has found herself a useful adjunct to her husband’s career but failing in her own.
Rose and Sammy are Hollywood insiders with Sammy’s company representing a director who has made a billion dollar “property” and is now in a position to greenlight any project he wants. Sammy is desperate to please Gerald and his new girlfriend, the up-and-coming talent, Delia (Eva De Dominici). Rose and Sammy are parents to Wilder (Roland Rubio) a six-year-old who is carelessly minded by the phone obsessed Tracy (Kate Comer) but carefully monitored by Rose. One of the ironies of the day of the party is that Rose receives a call stating that she’s too old to play the mother of a six-year-old, “Nobody would believe it.”
It doesn’t help Rose that she’s also “mothering” her husband whose insecurity is in overdrive leading him to constantly snipe at her as he tells her he’s “Not sure you’d stick around with me if this grand project of ours were reduced to survival.” Rose has organized the party to what she believes is his specifications, yet she’s consistently interrupted each time she tries to get dressed to attend. First, it is by Helen who has driven “home” to their house – a place she once lived in with her husband also named Sammy. Helen is clearly confused and, as Rose finds out, is dying. Her memories of the house and her life there become a surreal prism that echoes Rose’s current reality.
Another uninvited guest who arrives to unbalance the already stress-laden evening is Lucien (Pedro Pascal) a Hollywood A-lister who has been recently released from rehab. Lucien is Rose’s ex-lover from the years when she was a heralded stage actress. His presence leads to Sammy having another crisis of faith: what if Rose is still in love with the man whose charisma is widely feted?
At its heart, The Uninvited is a story of the permanent impermanence of women who were once “somebody” until the system decided they weren’t. Helen talks about her time spent going to parties with stars such as David Niven (Delia doesn’t know who she’s talking about) and wonders who has kept the memories of her? Delia, who has been given a film role that Rose originated on stage with Lucien almost twenty years ago and is set to play opposite Lucien in the film, looks at Rose’s life and assumes she’s happy as a mother. Rose adores her son, but she’s not happy at having lost her career and being spoken about in the past-tense. While the three women interact, the men at the party wheel and deal and congratulate each other. Gerald, in particular, has decided he’s a Godlike figure. As much as he admires Rose, he doesn’t stop for a moment to consider what she may feel when he tells stories of her groundbreaking performance in the play that he’s not even considered her for despite the leading man remaining the same.
“If you were ten years younger,” says Gerald to Rose when he arrives with Delia who is treading a similar path to what Rose did in her “lost youth.” The solipsism and blindness of the men would be funny if it weren’t so casually entitled. Lucien waltzing back into Rose’s life and telling her he still loves her and only broke up with her all those years ago because he was threatened by her talent. Sammy speaking of how much he adores Rose to Helen as Rose “works the party” for him, but he clearly has forgotten that his wife has, not had, ambition as an actress. When Sammy is imagining his dream team for a new venture he forgets to include Rose’s name on it.
Because The Uninvited clearly wears its origins as a play, the immediate focus is on both script and performance. The performances are the defining strength of the film. Elizabeth Reaser, Lois Smith, Rufus Sewell, and Walton Goggins are eminently watchable as they interpret Connors’ script into a cinematic creation. The themes are expertly conveyed even when the script finds itself on shaky ground. For example, there’s a recurring bit about a glow fish fairytale that Rose tells Wilder which Connors gives undue weight to as a philosophical key, and some of the “reveals” that prove the core thesis of the film are easily spotted. Plus, a subplot about aura photography at the party doesn’t add anything to the work beyond shallow visual flair (flare?).
Clunkiness aside, The Uninvited is an earnest, sometimes scathing, but predominantly heartfelt examination of how little things change for women over the ages when it comes to having to choose career, motherhood, or being a support system for the insecurities of men. Being seen and heard as people rather than projections is incongruent in the Hollywood Hills where success is surface. When the party is over heartbreak might await, but if it does, there is still a heart to heal.
