Your first college roommates can quickly become your best friends or your worst enemies, and either way, a reflection of who you are right at the moment when many young people are living away from home for the first time. The forthcoming Netflix movie Roommates sets out to capture that chaotic energy—with a soundtrack that fittingly includes Charli XCX's “girl, so confusing.”
Directed by Chandler Levack (Mile End Kicks) and produced by Adam Sandler's Happy Madison production company, Roommates stars Sadie Sandler (You're So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah) as Devon and Chloe East (Heretic) as Celeste, the titular pair of roommates. Rounding out the cast is Storm Reid, Billy Bryk, Ivy Wolk, Bailee Madison, Francesca Scorsese, and more. The script was written by Jimmy Fowlie and Ceara O'Sullivan, who penned Saturday Night Live's viral “Domingo” sketch.
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“I really loved that it was this super funny, honest investigation of first year of college, [when] there aren't a lot of coming-of-age movies about your first year of college,” director Chandler Levack tells Teen Vogue. “It really is a super bizarre time in your life where you're leaving your family for the very first time, you're trying to define yourself outside of everyone you've ever known and reinvent yourself, but you're also terrified and socially awkward and thrust into adulthood.”
In the film, Devon is a bit naive, while Celeste is the more worldly cool girl. “Devon is going into her freshman year of college having never really had a friend," Sadie Sandler tells Teen Vogue over email. “She’s socially awkward and just trying to find her place—her goal is to finally find her group.” East adds, “They meet freshman year thinking they’re going to be besties—like they’re going to totally understand each other—and then you start to see little cracks in the wall.”
Fittingly, Sandler was experiencing some of the movie's plot in real time; Levack reveals Sandler was finishing her freshman year at New York University—with roommates she actually loved—when they began pre-production.
“In college, everyone’s trying to figure themselves out,” Sandler says. "If you don’t even know who you are yet, how can you have a stable relationship?”
Ultimately, having a roommate, especially one who shares an actual room, is one of the most intimate experiences you can have with another person. You get their daily habits, you change clothes next to each other, you see who they are when no one's watching.
“You're privy to all of these persons best and worst moments, and you just get dropped into somebody else's life in the most intimate way possible, and a lot of times, it's just a total stranger,” says Levack, who has had several wild experiences with roommates. “There's a reason that Charli XCX's ‘girl, so confusing’ became our theme song for the movie. These really intense female friendships are more intoxicating and overwhelming than any toxic male relationship I've ever had. You live and die by their affirmation, and it just completely envelopes your entire life.”
Roommates is streaming on Netflix on April 17.
