Two best friends. No apartment. Very little money. And one questionable plan to spend an entire year without paying rent.
If Rent Free has somehow escaped your watchlist, consider this your reminder that Fernando Andrés’ funny, messy and refreshingly honest queer comedy is streaming right now on Dekkoo.
What Is Rent Free About?
Ben and Jordan are best friends trying to figure out what comes next.
After their plans to relocate to New York go spectacularly off course, the pair find themselves back in Austin without a permanent place to live. Their solution? Turn couch surfing into an experiment: spend an entire year living “rent free” by bouncing between the homes of friends, family and anyone else willing to take them in.
As you might imagine, things get complicated.
What begins as a clever way to save money becomes something much bigger — a funny, chaotic and sometimes uncomfortable look at friendship, sex, money, growing up and the realization that eventually you might actually have to get your life together.
A Queer Friendship Story That Feels Refreshingly Real
At its heart, Rent Free is a movie about friendship.
Jacob Roberts plays Ben, who is gay, while David Treviño plays his bisexual best friend Jordan. Rather than treating their sexualities as the central conflict of the movie, Rent Free lets its characters simply exist as complicated queer twenty-somethings trying — and frequently failing — to navigate adulthood.
Their friendship is affectionate, frustrating, codependent and occasionally self-destructive. In other words, it feels lived-in.
Director Fernando Andrés, who co-wrote the film with Tyler Rugh, is particularly interested in that messy space between being young enough to believe everything will somehow work itself out and being old enough to realize that maybe it won’t.
Andrés previously directed the queer drama Three Headed Beast, and Rent Free continues his interest in depicting queer relationships without sanding down their rougher edges.
From Austin to Tribeca
Rent Free had its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival, where it competed in the U.S. Narrative Competition.
The film’s Austin setting is more than background scenery. Ben and Jordan are trying to build lives in a city that’s changing around them while confronting the increasingly familiar realities of expensive housing, unstable work and the strange economics of young adulthood.
Their plan to avoid rent altogether might be ridiculous.
Their reasons for wanting to do it? Maybe not so much.
The result is part buddy comedy, part coming-of-age story and part portrait of a generation that isn’t entirely sure what “getting your life together” is supposed to look like anymore.
Funny, Sexy and Just Uncomfortable Enough
There’s plenty happening underneath Rent Free, but this isn’t homework.
The movie is funny.
Ben and Jordan make bad decisions. They hook up. They overstay their welcomes. They test friendships. They find themselves in situations that range from hilarious to painfully awkward.
And beneath all of it is the increasingly obvious question: How long can you keep drifting before somebody — including yourself — expects you to grow up?
That’s what makes Rent Free such an easy recommendation for Dekkoo viewers. It’s unapologetically queer without needing to constantly announce that it’s queer, and its characters are allowed to be horny, selfish, charming, irritating, vulnerable and funny — sometimes all at once.
Where Can I Watch Rent Free?
Right here.
Rent Free is streaming on Dekkoo, alongside hundreds of gay films, queer comedies, dramas, romances, international movies and Dekkoo Originals.
If you’re looking for a queer movie that’s funny, sexy, contemporary and a little bit chaotic, Ben and Jordan are waiting for you.
Preferably on someone else’s couch.
WATCH RENT FREE ON DEKKOO →
You can also watch the Rent Free trailer on Dekkoo before diving in.
