Rent-A-Pal
Karen Carpenter sang that it was a sad affair and Britney Spears claimed it was killing her, but neither of them knew loneliness the way that David Brower does: forty years old, it is ten years since his father died and he now lives in the basement of his mother Lucille; suffering from dementia, he is her sole carer and it is his sole occupation, the two of them surviving on welfare.
Trapped with a woman who know longer recognises him as her son and unable to leave her unsupervised for more than a few minutes, with no other options available David has registered at the Video Rendezvous, viewing profiles of women who are as lonely and socially awkward as he is; he sees nobody who sparks interest and unsurprisingly nobody has asked for his contact details.
Instead, another tape catches his eye in the bargain bin, Rent-A-Pal, a man offering to be his new best friend, and in his basement David and “Andy” begin a stilted call-and-response where he receives abstract assurances of his worth, confessions to bring them closer, random conversational segues and, when David does bring home a girl, mockery and accusations of abandonment.
The debut feature of writer/director Jon Stevenson, Rent-A-Pal is uncomfortable viewing, Brian Landis Folkins’ David the embodiment of a thousand relatable disappointments, a victim of circumstances beyond his control which have bound him to Kathleen Brady’s Lucille, needy and demanding, sometimes ungrateful and thoughtless but never out of malice, a victim herself in a two-handed tragedy of the video age.
A flawed surrogate of artificial happiness, Star Trek The Next Generation’s Wil Wheaton remains physically confined to the screen as Andy but soon permeates David’s psyche, a possessive and cruel reflection which preys on his insecurity and vulnerability, matching and magnifying his emotional instability.
A claustrophobic cautionary tale blending the format of Doctor Who’s Blink with the agenda of The Idiot’s Lantern which might have benefitted from occasional fast-forwarding to bring it closer to an hour and a half rather than almost two, Rent-A-Pal recognises that there is a whole section of the population disconnected and ignored for whom television is their only company, a manipulative false friend too often presenting a skewed perspective.
Rent-A-Pal will be available on Digital Download from Monday 16th November
