Caustic Comedy About Couch-Surfing Friends Is A Perfect Portrait Of The Times

Finding purpose in your mid-twenties right now is kind of difficult — rising rent prices make it nearly impossible to live anywhere notable, a sense of impending doom makes it feel as if the future doesn’t really matter, and all of this has caused a sense of melancholic listlessness that could hinder any sort of desire to make meaningful progress. It’s not all bad, but it also feels like it’s never been worse, at least for young adults who find themselves trapped between college life and the eroding idea of what it means to be successful in a world that keeps moving the line.

Rent Free finds two best friends — Ben (Jacob Roberts), who is chaotic by nature and is moving to New York City from Austin, Texas, and Jordan (David Treviño), who is slightly more stable but only because he has a girlfriend who is getting tired of helping him hold it all together — in this exact situation.

When Ben’s lack of impulse control leads to a falling out with his would-be NYC roommates, he is forced to return to Austin with Jordan, where, in a moment of drug-fueled passion, the pair decide to try to live for a year without paying any rent. In theory, it’s a brilliant idea, one that would allow them to save up for a move back to NYC, but reality is so much bleaker.

Rent Free Is The Perfect Movie For This Moment

Its biting humor hits close to home

Roberts is a revelation as the messy, innately unmoored Ben. Under the Texas sun, he wanders around Austin looking for Grindr hook-ups and working the gig economy, eschewing commitment in all areas of his life for a nomadic lifestyle. His messiness speaks to an underlying immaturity and an unwillingness to let go of the past — Ben would much rather be back in undergrad than trying to make a living in today’s world. While Ben’s commitment issues are clearly the underlying problem, his indecisiveness is only exacerbated by Jordan’s own passive attitude.

On the surface, Jordan seems to have a more grounded perspective and stable life, but once his relationship ends, he is just as untethered as Ben. He has a long-term girlfriend and has built a life with her, but this all comes crumbling down — partially thanks to Ben, but also because of Jordan’s own lack of ambition. The idea of living rent-free is more Ben’s than Jordan’s, but like all bad ideas, it feels like a good one because someone else is agreeing to do it with him.

Jordan and Ben risk falling into the stereotypical slacker role, but Treviño and Roberts, along with writer-director Fernando Andrés, make the pair feel wholly real. There is a goal at the end of this rent-free journey and, no matter how impossible it seems to achieve, it’s something Jordan and Ben do not let go of. They also, for the most part, maintain their bond. Formed over 15 years, Ben and Jordan’s friendship feels rare and perfectly complementary, allowing them to grow in tandem while still being brutally honest with one another.

Rent Free Is About So Much More Than Friendship

It’s a portrait of a city, and a generation, in crisis

Each place that Ben and Jordan move into gets a title card revealing the address, bedroom/bathroom count, and monthly rent. Austin’s recent tech boom has seen rent prices skyrocket, leading to gentrification and the sanitization of so much of what made the city unique. It’s a problem that is hitting major cities all over the country, so it’s not hard to imagine Jordan and Ben trying to make it elsewhere and failing nonetheless. It’s a startlingly honest look at the state of things and, though it’s couched in caustic humor, Rent Free is a sobering look at the current moment for young adults.

The soul-crushing journey of post-college adulthood is only compounded by the fact that the world around us is crumbling under the very same pressure. Couch-surfing as escapism is only a temporary coping mechanism, a fun experiment that Ben and Jordan make work for as long as they can. When reality catches up with them in the suburbs outside of Dallas, though, everything falls apart.

Rent Free doesn’t veer too far into dramatic territory, but when it does, it feels earned, a sobering moment that snaps the blurry edges of our protagonists’ perspective into crystal clear view. It could be saccharine, but Rent Free plays Ben and Jordan’s revelations with a sense of detached irony, contradictions of sentimentality and cool detachment living together in discordant harmony. It’s an apt collision of feelings for a movie that so intimately captures a generation on the frontlines of collapse and change.

The people we see throughout Ben and Jordan’s rent-free year, including a hilariously toxic gay couple and an overstuffed DIY-esque ranch filled with friends and acquaintances, are living different lives on the surface, but they suffer from the same malaise that Jordan and Ben do, a feeling of being stuck in a world that wants nothing to do with you. To keep fighting, and to keep being funny even then, is a radical act in itself.

Rent Free premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival.

Pros

• Rent Free is a laugh-out-loud comedy with excellent central performances.
• The film feels of-this-moment in a way that’s rare in topical cinema.
• At the intersection of ironic detachment and warm sentimentality, Rent Free finds the perfect balance.