Rent A Friend

Like the earlier films by Terstall, Rent a Friend offers a light-hearted and comic look at modern big-city life, with a very accurate feeling for aspects of friend- and relationships. However for the first time a considerably larger budget was available for Rent a Friend, which is expressed in the stylisation of the film that was largely shot in Rotterdam. The film has a futurist, metropolitan look that, alongside the Cinemascope format, strengthens the mood of commercialisation and paid friendship. Alfred is in an artistic hiatus, he only paints Mexican hats. This annoys his ambitious girlfriend Moniek, who accuses him of a lack of commercial insight. She writes episodes for a popular soap. When Alfred finds out that she is having an affair with her rich boss, he leaves her and starts his own business: he rents himself out as a friend. The concept is a hit: he soon has to take on more rental friends for his company. (‘Do you have ten friends for a reunion tonight?’) A real friends’ agency is born. Alfred will show the whole world, and above all Moniek, how commercial he can be. The customer is always right: Alfred with a posh accent, Alfred who cheers when the German soccer team scores, Alfred as loser, anything goes. When Alfred takes on a resolute manager, she makes sure that business grows explosively.