Erase the word “Austin” from their content, and most people would have a hard time detecting any connective thread between Richard Linklater’s 1990 indie breakout “Slacker” and its distant offspring, the new comedy “Rent Free.” The Texas burg of the earlier film was the kind of laid-back collegiate small town where moderate eccentrics with no visible means of fiscal support could just drift from day to day, in a perpetual “gap year” between university enrollment and whatever shape adult life might eventually take. In Fernando Andres’ sophomore feature, by contrast, the pressure is on: Life ain’t cheap in what’s become a much bigger, pricier metropolis, with every crashpad our rudderless heroes land on identified onscreen by its estimated market value.
“Slacker” anticipated the indie mumblecore movement that the slicker “Rent Free” now post-dates. This new film carries on their loose lineage of idiosyncratic, character-based cringe comedies in which twentysomethings grapple with finding a place in the larger world—and failing, more often that not. Andres’ male odd couple are frequently maddening in their poor decisions, which always manage to make awkward situations worse. But those situations are also very funny, and eventually even a bit touching, as an episodic progress adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Having traveled the festival circuit after premiering at Tribeca last year, “Rent Free” launches on digital platforms on Friday.
Ben (Jacob Roberts), who is gay, and the theoretically-bi-but-mostly-straight Jordan (David Trevino) are lifelong besties introduced visiting Manhattan. Thanks to the largess of well-off Lindsay (Annabel O’Hagan) and Rob (Jeff Kardesch), Ben plans to stay on, while Jordan will return to Austin. Their vacation cash already gone, the two men spend what’s expected to be one last day together joyfully seeing how big a bite of the Big Apple they can take without spending a cent — jumping subway turnstiles, enjoying buskers and free museum days, etc.
Unfortunately, a drunken Ben makes a heinous error in judgment that abruptly extinguishes the generosity of their hosts. Ongoing guest-room tenancy now off the table, he has no choice but slink back to Austin, where he’d already terminated his prior employment and housing arrangements. So he ends up an unanticipated houseguest for Jordan’s girlfriend Anna (Molly Edelman), who’s already dubious about supporting one financially challenged manchild. She draws the line at making it two, pushed past tolerance by the general obnoxiousness of Ben — a simultaneously over-sensitive and insensitive type that only a mother (or BFF) could love.
Hoping to turn imminent homelessness into an adventure, the duo make a plan inspired by their day of economical entertainment in Manhattan: They’ll spend the next 12 months hopping from one friend’s abode to another, putting aside all income saved on rent towards a permanent return to NYC.
Needless to say, they’ll wear out a lot of welcomes en route to that ever-receding goal. The exquisite-corpse narrative ensuing leans hard on the charity of households that encompass a group party pad, an ex’s shared apartment, a lesbian couple, at least one of Ben’s Grindr hookups, and more. This nomadic existence finally frays not just their hosts’ patience but also the central friendship. Transforming into something like a bickering married couple, they find adversity strengthens their bond until it unlatches like a flying wedge.
Their interdependency makes “Rent Free” endearing, despite all the exasperating behavior on display. Ben, in particular, is so belligerently tone-deaf that you marvel that he has any friends left to alienate. His peevishness is partly explained when he and Jordan must return to his family home, where Ben’s father (Jeff Wise) and brothers (Matt Rubal, Andrew Logan) constitute a small army of fist-bumping bros — but Ben ends up more of a cross for them to bear than vice-versa.
That’s one of several standout stretches here, another being the note-perfect depiction of our heroes feeling the indiscriminate love while on ecstacy. All these interludes are sharply written and played, with the most impressive turns often springing from the most annoying personalities: Notably Roberts’ Ben, but also Neal Mulani as the bossier half of an upwardly mobile gay couple, and Kristin Slaysman as a swinger who attempts to reposition Ben on the Kinsey Scale. These figures stop just short of caricature, their self-absorption credible even when it verges on the grotesque.
Those looking for generational insights will find some here, with the broadest conclusion to be drawn being that most millennials really do not care who’s gay, straight, bi or whatever. But that blase attitude doesn’t extend to the more serious matter of dinero. Ben scrapes by as a none-too-gracious DoorDash delivery driver, among other odd jobs; Jordan may have a vocation as a photographer, but needs to apply himself. While there’s little closure at the fadeout here, you can be sure they’ll each have to sort the issue of becoming self-supporting out sooner than later.
Andres and his returning co-writer Tyler Rugh made an intriguing feature debut four years with “Three Headed Beast”: an almost dialogue-free fictive portrait of an open marriage that turns into a menage a trois. It was accomplished, if ultimately more compelling as a stylistic experiment than in storytelling or emotional terms. “Rent Free,” however, has heart as well as panache, much as we may want to shake some sense into its characters. Anders’ own cinematography and editing (Drew Levin shot the opening New York sequences) are astute and their willingness to mix up tones and tactics is echoed in Austin Weber’s original score and music supervisor Livy Rodriguez-Behar’s diverse selection of preexisting tracks.