by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $14.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Akira Emoto, Shannon Gorman
Intro:
… soothes the heart at every turn.
In the age of the gig economy, the notion of hiring actors to stand in as family members, funerary mourners, even apologetic mistresses, doesn’t need as much cultural translation as it did back in the early ‘90s when the service was first offered in Japan. We outsource for basically everything nowadays, so why not bring in others to make requisite social interactions?
That’s admittedly a rather cold perspective on the practice, more fitting for how Werner Herzog captured the business with his 2019 docu-drama Family Romance LLC. But that’s not the perspective that Rental Family takes. Essentially, co-writer/director Hikari treats rental family service similarly to how she presented sex work in her feature debut 37 Seconds: As a service that exists because there is a need for it.
The film follows struggling expat actor Phillip (Brendan Fraser) as he works for a rental family agency. Through the dialogue and the visual framing, we are introduced to the sheer awkwardness of these arrangements, and can also see a remarkable amount of emotional warmth and even some reciprocated chuckles. Seeing Phillip stumble his way through a face-saving marriage, or mourning a stranger at a funeral, or just playing video games with a social shut-in, Fraser’s performance gives the character’s culture shock and later determination to play the roles he’s assigned, a lot of gravitas, and maybe even a bit of metacommentary on the actor’s own career.
When the toothpaste ad placement that brought him to Japan in the first place, seven years prior to the film’s events, is shown, it recalls how his recent mainstream resurgence off the back of Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale was roughly the same amount of time after his last ‘mainstream’ turn in The Nut Job.
Hikari and co-writer Stephen Blahut weave a few of the expected plot developments for a story that is, essentially, built on characters lying to each other, and manage to still make them resonate. Even with the underlying artifice, the core relationship between Phillip and the young girl that he has been hired to stand-in as the father of (Shannon Gorman’s Mia) remains steadfastly sweet and heartwarming.
As does his connections with not only his other clients, but also his co-workers who bring their own perspectives on why they do what they do. Mari Yamamoto’s Aiko shows just enough of the darker side of the business to keep things from unbearably saccharine, Takehiro Hira as agency head Shinji lends surprising solemn energy to the frame, and Tamae Ando’s Lola bolsters the film’s approach to social and societal catharsis by bringing an explicit (and refreshingly benign) sex work perspective to the larger discussion. That emotional connection, that uplift, that closure needed to get through this moment, is a good thing and worth seeking if required. Even if it is ‘fake’. But then, if that really mattered, why would we need movies?
Rental Family is a charming and comforting story about the ways that social fantasy can often lead to emotional truth. It shows Hikari’s growing knack for finding affecting perspectives on fringe examples of what can be considered ‘customer service’, and it’s a testament to not just her but every performer on-screen (Brendan Fraser especially is fantastic here) that the film’s regular flirting with contrivance and bordering-on-treacly tone are unable to dampen the way this just soothes the heart at every turn.
