“Art can do things that therapy cannot.”
It’s a surprising statement from the psychotherapist Esther Perel, the biggest name in modern relationships and sexuality advice since Dr. Ruth. But it’s one that she firmly believes in.
“Art normalizes, it makes it universal, it takes it away from ‘This is my problem and I’m alone with this, and I’m going to do therapy to figure it out,’ and turns it into ‘This happens to so many of us,’” said Perel, author of the books “Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence” and “The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity.” She is also the host of the popular couples therapy podcast “Where Should We Begin?”
The “it” she is referring to is the strained marriage at the center of “The Invite,” the raucous, talky comedy directed by Olivia Wilde that opened to glowing reviews and impressive box office last month and is expanding nationwide on July 10. The film stars Wilde and Seth Rogen as Angela and Joe, a longtime married couple whose simmering resentment toward each other comes to a boil when their loved-up, sexually adventurous neighbors, Piña (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton), come over for dinner.
The movie is about the “challenges of couples who get stuck, who no longer can recognize themselves, who have lost a yearning, the longing, who have been trapped in chronic low-intensity warfare,” Perel, 67, said on a video call in New York in late June. She consulted on the film at the request of Wilde, who was a patient of Perel’s years ago, when the actress was in her 20s.
“She was incredibly helpful in terms of my own personal growth and understanding of relationships and really kind of blew my mind. I’d never met anyone like her,” said Wilde, 42. “There’s a way that Esther listens that is a whole other level of observant. She really moves through space differently, and I not only found her incredibly helpful when considering, literally, what the words on the page should be, but also how we could communicate these ideas without it sounding preachy or canned.”
Some of those ideas will be familiar to fans of Perel, who drew attention after the publication of “Mating in Captivity” in 2006, and whose fame grew significantly after two TED Talks, one in 2013 and another in 2015. They have been viewed, collectively, nearly 50 million times.
The idea of compersion (finding joy in a partner experiencing pleasure with someone else); the tension between the familiarity of love and mystery of desire; the concept of a relationship being over, but starting a new one with the same person instead of breaking up. All of those are classic Perel.
Wilde confirmed: “The movie has her DNA all over it.”
It’s not the only time that Perel has lent her expertise to a production. She was an adviser on two seasons of the Showtime drama “The Affair,” starring Dominic West and Ruth Wilson, and she also consulted on the script of, and appears in, the forthcoming drama “Let Love In,” about a husband and wife grappling with a long-concealed affair.
She also appeared as herself — signing copies of “Mating in Captivity” and articulating why people have affairs — in “Newness,” a 2017 drama about a young couple (Nicholas Hoult and Laia Costa) who explore an open relationship.
Perel feels strongly about her role in guiding onscreen depictions. “What I wanted was to take these conversations out of the therapy office,” and into “the public square and turn them from clinical material into cultural ideas,” said the Belgian-born psychotherapist, who has been treating patients for more than 40 years.
She is also an avid movie watcher and belongs to a film club that has screened and discussed “Force Majeure,” “The Lobster” and “The Worst Person in the World,” among others. “My podcast started because I kept saying couples therapy is the best theater in town,” Perel said. “The stories are gripping and nobody knows what’s happening in the neighbor’s house for real.”
In “The Invite,” Joe and Angela don’t know exactly what’s going on in Hawk and Piña’s apartment, but they can certainly hear it: That couple’s noisy lovemaking not only triggers Joe’s annoyance and Angela’s envy, but also highlights the deadness of their marriage. The setup may be comical, but Wilde wanted to make sure the movie, an adaptation of the 2021 Spanish film “Sentimental” by the writer-director Cesc Gay, had depth.
“The thing that’s making the film resonate with many people of all generations is simply the empathy and the recognition in so many of us that it’s difficult to sustain radical authenticity and a sense of your erotic self in any relationship that endures for a long time,” Norton, 56, said. “This film is not just about liberated sexual dynamics.”
Perel discussed the screenplay with Wilde and the movie’s writers, Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, and gave them a specific directive: “Don’t think about sexuality as something that people do, think about sexuality as a place where people go,” she said. “What you do with your genitals doesn’t tell you much. The meaning it has for you, the experience that you draw from it, the phenomenology, the poetics of the sex. That’s what really will reveal.”
The writers and cast met for an intense two weeks of workshopping before shooting began at Sunset Las Palmas Studios in Los Angeles, on the same stage where the pilot for “I Love Lucy” was filmed. “We would work very hard all day and then break off and Zoom with her and gut-check a lot of the instincts we were having,” Wilde said. Perel’s “experience with her patients is valuable because she knows what people say instead of the true thing.”
The collaboration continued when the cameras started rolling, particularly with Cruz’s character, Piña, a therapist and sexologist modeled closely on Perel, down to the blond wig that covered Cruz’s signature brown locks. “I liked her work very much, and I felt very, very, very lucky that I was able to have her on my phone and to call her when I had doubts about anything,” Cruz, 52, said.
The admiration was mutual: “I try to understand people from where they’re coming from, and she has that,” Perel said of Cruz’s Piña. “She’s truly curious, and she’s fearless. She kind of talks about everything as if she was talking about the jamón.” (Or prosciutto, as it were.)
Perel’s input was important in a pivotal scene where Piña trades her horny-neighbor hat for a therapist one. Piña asks Angela and Joe how they met. She talks about staying together for the sake of their daughter. She gives her take on their marriage, but, crucially, doesn’t tell them what to do. “That entire scene was dramatically reshaped based on our conversations with Esther,” Wilde said.
Movies and pop culture often reflect shifts in real-life behavior, and I asked Wilde and Perel whether the themes in “The Invite,” particularly the portrayal of consensual non-monogamy, mirrored an uptick in acceptance of extramarital activity.
“Oh I think so, yes,” Wilde said. “Ten years ago, the topic of polyamory was far more taboo. I really feel that open relationships as a concept is something that is far more mainstream.”
Perel, true to form, questioned what the base line should be. “Monogamy is a concept that has always evolved through history,” she said. “Relationships are breathing, living organisms that constantly adapt between continuity and change. Stability and novelty. Familiarity and surprise. Security and freedom. All the time. And that’s what makes them so fascinating.”
