The Overnight review – silly swinging fun

Here’s an amiably goofy, if dramatically thin comedy of swinging sexual manners. It comes on like a gentler version of Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers – with maybe a dollop of that highly odd 2009 movie Humpday on the side. Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Schilling) are a couple with a young child and new to Los Angeles; in the park they chance upon Kurt (Jason Schwartzman), a charmingly persistent but weird guy who invites them to dinner with his French wife Charlotte (Judith Godrèche).

Over wine and other stimulants, Kurt and Charlotte invite their guests to get naked with them in the pool, and perhaps have further intimacies in mind, triggering Alex’s sexual hangups. It’s silly but diverting, and the fact that none of the characters is really believable is not a problem. There’s a gag about the sex lives of couples with young children that bookends the movie neatly, though it prevents the subject from being explored all that seriously – but then exploring it seriously isn’t a priority. Disposable fun.