rental_family

Hikari's schlocky new film Rental Family is a heartwarming detour about the ever-pitiable Brendan Frasier being embraced by an otherwise uptight cast of Japanese misfits. Kinda like everyone saw Lost In Translation over there and decided they'd pay for the experience Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannsen had.

As the title suggests, Frasier's character Phillip, a struggling American actor living in Japan, joins an agency who rents actors out to people around the city to fulfill missing social roles: a gaming buddy, a funeral mourner, a dad, and even a groom. The agency gives us a unique angle from which to observe rigid cultural expectations, especially when the American enters the group. It is surprising to see Hikari put such an American bent on this story - although using dopey Frasier as the contrast to an eternally uptight Japanese culture is very effective. I looked it up and this rent-a-family industry is a real thing. I was initially put off, thinking the whole premise was so unbelievable and shines an exaggerated light onto the culture... but many of these situations actually happened in real life. Check out this New Yorker article:

Eleven years ago, a friend of Ishii’s, a single mother, told him that she was having trouble getting her daughter into a competitive kindergarten, because schools favored children whose parents were married. Ishii volunteered to impersonate the child’s father at a school interview. The interview was not a success—the daughter wasn’t used to him and their interaction was stilted—but it filled him with the desire to do better, and to “correct injustice” by helping other women in his friend’s situation. Looking around to see whether anyone had thought to start a professional service of this kind, he came across the Web site of a rental-relative agency called Hagemashi-tai.

After The Whale, Frasier seems to be best fit for the out-of-place loner roles. Fortunately, the closeups in this one feature way more smiles and bittersweet tears. I think his career renaissance contributes to the on-screen sympathies as well, because most audience members who are aware of his hollywood blacklist history (it is sad) are pulling for him to succeed, even if he is portraying some purely evil villain. Even without the real world help, though, his expressive, bulging eyes and careful performance are good enough to draw you in. It is hard not to feel moved by many of his interactions with Kikuo and Mia. Those two main roles (a journalist hired to remind an ageing actor of his relevancy and a replacement father to a gradeschool girl) carry the bulk of the momentum and emotional weight for the duration of the film. It is fun to watch him detour at the strip club or playing sega dreamcast with some lonely dude, but they are there just to pump the breaks and flesh the world before we dive back into the core stories. The Mia story is instantly impactful, and the Kikuo story grows slowly until the emotional avalanche that hits you is the size of the ancient tree under which he unearths his past in a fantastic emotional climax. Phillip and Kikuo 'jailbreak' to his childhood village, now overgrown, to remember one last time. Coincidentally, it is the the scene that has stuck with with me the most.

Rental Family keeps it cozy, heartwarming, and almost Hallmark-y without feeling disrespectful to the audience.