Review: Rental Family — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

Rental Family

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Rating: PG-13

Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes

Stars: Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Akira Emoto

Writers: Hikari, Stephen Blahut

Director: Hikari

Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival

 

The appeal of Brendan Fraser, no matter what phase of his career, has always come from behind those soulful eyes.

In his hunky days of yore, Fraser played self-absorbed heroes whose soft eyes nevertheless betrayed a heart of gold. A couple of years ago, in his Oscar-winning The Whale, those eyes burned lava-hot with loss and helplessness.

Now, in this crowd-pleasing family drama, Fraser once again enlists his ocular weaponry, this time as a guy whose entire career involves dispensing kindness and emotional closure to people he barely knows. And, as we all realize by now, there’s no one better qualified for the job.

If you’ve ever doubted that Japanese culture is fundamentally different from ours, consider the real-life industry that is at the center of Rental Family: casting agencies that provide actors to people who need someone to portray a role in their lives.

Sometimes a person may simply want to fill in empty tables at a wedding reception (one agency can provide up to 1,000 fake wedding guests). Occasionally a recently divorced individual may hire an empathetic stand-in to wipe away their tears of disappointment. Or, sometimes, someone just needs a pretend friend to hang with.

Phil (Fraser) is a middlingly talented American actor trying to make it in Tokyo. He arrived in town several years ago to “star” in a toothpaste commercial, and just ended up staying. But forging a career solely on the basis of being “the American guy” is neither fulfilling nor lucrative, and he’s beginning to wonder if it’s time to return to the States.

But one day Phil’s agent offers him an intriguing gig: playing the fake groom in a sham wedding being put on by a woman who wants her parents to believe she’s marrying an American man ahead of moving to the States. It’s a lot to explain here, and even more to maneuver through as Phil gamely meets mom and dad, mingles with relatives, and then quietly slips away as the bride’s true love arrives for the honeymoon.

Mystified as he is by the assignment, Phil finds the whole thing oddly appealing. He sits down with the owner of the Rental Family agency (Shogun’s Takehiro Hira) and maps out a tentative schedule of upcoming domestic roles, most notably as the brother of a video game-loving man; a reporter interviewing a fading film actor; and, most significantly, a replacement dad for a young girl.

The lines between act and actuality occasionally get blurred, but Fraser’s character, his eyes widening with discovery and confidence, inevitably finds a compassionate center.

Of course, Phil isn’t performing in a vacuum: His job profoundly affects the lives of those with whom he intersects. Beloved Japanese star Akira Emoto — a winner of his home country’s Oscar — plays the old actor whose family wants him to feel one last burst of professional glory as his memory fades. Phil spends long hours with him, feigning fandom and helping him relive favorite screen moments. The assignment becomes complicated when the fragile old man insists on visiting his remote home town — a trek that requires a level of physical and emotional endurance that may be beyond him.

At least that assignment comes with a built-in end time: Phil will eventually say goodbye and disappear from the actor’s life forever, most likely soon forgotten. Less cut-and-dry, however, is Phil’s tenure as a father to a young girl named Mia.

Even the motivation behind the job is muddled: Mia’s mother (Shino Shinozaki) is a contented single mom who fears her status will imperil her daughter’s chances of getting into a prestigious private school. She hires Phil not so much to be a companion to Mia as to provide a father figure at the school’s parental interview. Still, in order for the ruse to work, Mia must act as though Phil is her actual dad, so the two head off on a series of outings that — no surprise — lead to a genuine bond.

It’s not hard to imagine the layers of complication these jobs inspire, not just for Phil but also for everyone in his various orbits of influence. Indeed, as the film unspools, one begins to wonder if the lies and deceptions that slip into each other like an endless set of nesting dolls are worth the purported convenience they are supposed to provide. Even the professionals at Phil’s agency find themselves buffeted in a flood of conflicting roles that inevitably bleed into their private lives.

Co-writer/director Hikari — who directed several episodes of the Emmy-winning Netflix series Beef — anticipates how odd the rental family concept is to an American audience. But she has a wonderfully patient and insightful tour guide in Fraser, who, through Phil’s sympathetic eyes, helps us see beyond our Western aversion to such high-stakes cosplay and ultimately embrace a culture’s mechanism, however convoluted, that endeavors to scatter the stigma of loneliness and rejection.