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L'Invitation (1973) Claude Goretta; Jean-Luc Bideau, Corinne Coderey
L'Invitation (1973) Claude Goretta; Jean-Luc Bideau, Corinne Coderey
 
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This is a region-free DVD-R without case or artwork.

In French with English subtitles.

Rémy Placet is a humble office employee who has worked for the same insurance company for the past twenty years. When his mother dies, he is given two months' compassionate leave, during which time he sells his city centre house in Geneva and acquires a much larger property, with ample gardens, in the countryside just outside the city. Pining in solitude, he invites all of his colleagues, including his boss, to his house for a summer garden party. Under the influence of alcohol, liberally poured by a hired manservant named Émile, the guests soon dispense with office formality and begin to reveal their true natures.

Taking as his inspiration a stage play by Michel Viala entitled Les Médiocres, Swiss film director Claude Goretta crafted one of the cruellest and cleverest social satires of the 1970s, although its sublime gentility masks the savagery of its author's critique of bourgeois society. On the face of it, L'Invitation is a modest comedy of manners, somewhere between Luis Buñuel's Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972) and Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), daintily sifted through the fine sieve of Swiss restraint and decorum. It takes one bunch of people and puts them in an unfamiliar setting, with predictably comical results. The people in question are an odd assortment of colleagues who have spent most of their waking lives together, without taking the time to get to know one another. The garden party to which they are invited provides them with the opportunity to emerge from their shells and reveal their true personas to their fellow office workers - an opportunity that some embrace a little too enthusiastically, while other resist it with the hardened stoicism of a Victorian governess. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

Average Rating: Average Rating: 5 of 5 5 of 5 Total Reviews: 2 Write a review »

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5 of 5 Excellent February 23, 2021
Reviewer: Steven Harvey from Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire United Kingdom  
Excellent.  Have used in the past and will use again.  I am so pleased you exist as I would never get the chance to see some of these obscure films.

With thanks.

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  0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 
5 of 5 L'Invitation April 17, 2017
Reviewer: Kevon Wick from Seattle, WA United States  
Perfect service; spot on, and attention to detail.  Never received less from you.
Thank you!

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