Sundance film festival: Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton are exceptional in a smart and funny winner about sex, marriage and partner-swapping

Not enough people managed to see last year’s self-billed “unromantic comedy” Splitsville, a shame for how tremendously entertaining it was and for what it represents at this given moment. A rigorously well-directed, genuinely funny, relatably messy look at two couples dealing with the maelstrom of non-monogamy, it was the kind of smart, well-crafted film for adults we are constantly complaining we don’t get enough of.

I had a similar thrill watching The Invite at its sold-out Sundance premiere on Saturday night. Like that film, it is also about two adult couples negotiating anxieties surrounding sex with other people – and also like that film, it’s really, consistently funny and stylishly directed, made with the kind of care and rigidity that comedies just aren’t afforded now. It doesn’t have the same absurdist slapstick streak – it’s much more of this world – but it made me feel equally energised, a reminder that maybe that mid-sized movie gap is finally being filled. I just hope more people see this one.

Sundance film festival: an inventively made fantasy boasts eye-catching premise and typically rewarding performance from Oscar-winner but something’s missing

In terms of attention-demanding loglines, this year’s Sundance has a few. There’s body horror Saccharine, about a diet craze that involves eating human ashes, midnight movie Buddy, about a Barney-esque kids TV star who starts murdering children and then there’s Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant which, well, you can probably imagine.

But the annual “wait, what?” prize easily goes to offbeat fable Wicker, the story of a smelly spinster fisherwoman who commissions herself a husband made of, that’s right, wicker. While the film does have its expected amount of audience-provoking moments – wicker-fucking bringing the most noise both on and off the screen – to its credit, there’s an attempt to give us more than just easy shock value, something that can’t always be said for films in this often tedious category. Writer-directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, who previously brought mostly likeable alien invasion comedy Save Yourselves! to the festival, use their far-out premise to touch upon more of-our-world issues like the patriarchal cruelty of marriage and the special fury reserved for those who dare to live outside of the accepted rules. They succeed in brief flashes but ultimately, there’s too much here that doesn’t gel, a tonally uneven mix of mostly unfunny bawdy humour, dark fantasy and unlikely romance, too much wood but not enough fire.

Wicker is screening at the Sundance film festival