Male friendship is weird—to yearn for it is even more so. This is a dynamic that writer and director Andrew DeYoung delights in dismantling and examining. The latest comedy from film company A24, Friendship, marks DeYoung’s disturbingly funny and brilliantly off-putting directorial debut. DeYoung describes the story as “a middle-aged guy who’s spinning out about trying to be friends with somebody.”
Craig, played with disarming awkwardness by Tim Robinson, works in digital engagement. He spends his days analyzing how to keep strangers addicted to apps which he himself cannot put down. Craig’s distant relationship with his wife and son makes him long for company. Austin, played by an ever-charming Paul Rudd, is a weatherman living down the street whose existence glows with charisma. Craig adores Austin’s punk band, outdoorsmanship, and crowd of friends; he wants in.
This is not a film about a bromance. Instead, it’s a film about a mediocre, middle-aged Craig who wants to be friends with his cool neighbor, Austin. That’s literally it. When it doesn’t work out, that’s enough to break the protagonist. Craig is sent on a bizarre downward spiral that leads to a wild 97 minutes of breaking and entering, firearm theft, nicotine addiction, and becoming a danger to his friends and family.
It’s tempting to laugh at Craig over the course of the film’s antics. But laughter risks becoming a kind of defense mechanism, and Friendship is a masterclass in cringe. Friendship shows that to want human connection badly is embarrassing. To confess that embarrassment? Even worse. But DeYoung never plays Craig’s desire solely as laughable. Instead, he lets it hang uncomfortably between comedy and tragedy, brilliantly refusing to ignore Friendship’s tragic elements.
Craig’s yearning leads to more questions. What does it mean to know someone or to be known? What do you do when you want someone’s friendship more than they want yours? At times, we’ve all been Craig, and we’re reminded of this as we’re forced to sit in on Craig’s experience and ponder the answers to these questions ourselves.
DeYoung doesn’t blame Craig’s loneliness on his algorithmic career, but he doesn’t let it off the hook either. “We’re surrounded by all these horrible pieces of technology that we have to navigate,” says DeYoung. “I thought that Craig should have a job that’s about connecting people by manipulating them.” Friendship builds a world that looks just like ours: emotionally disconnected but digitally obsessed, warm on the outside but crumbling underneath.
The cinematography is undoubtedly, sometimes overwhelmingly, beautiful, casting mundane scenes in a new light. Cinematographer Andy Rydzewski combines the Arri Alexa Mini digital camera with the high contrast of Zeiss and Angénieux lenses, capturing suburbia’s lush colors like a fever dream. Editor Sophie Corra masterfully stitches together each scene, timing each cut to let the human awkwardness behind each performance breathe, engrossing you in what feels more like real lives than characters.
“There’s something very human about the way we put a lid on our feelings,” DeYoung has said. “Instead of finding a community and expressing ourselves, we just build a bomb and put a lid on it.” That bomb is ticking in Friendship. Not like a Hitchcock thriller, but in the quiet mundanity of everyday life.
DeYoung’s explosive of choice is the quiet sadness of a man who doesn’t know how to say, “I need you to like me.” The audience can’t help but stare and laugh and squirm as Craig grapples with the loneliness threatening to tear his life apart. The film doesn’t treat male loneliness as either pathology or punchline. It just lets it exist, raw and unresolved. Maybe that’s the point.
