This film has been Inspired by real-life businesses such as the Japanese Efficiency Corporation (Nihon Kikaseu Honbu) that enables clients to rent out actors to play wedding guests, estranged parents, romantic partners or loneliness pals.
What’s served up is a Tokyo dramedy, and in the wrong director’s hand, it could have been a cringy, saccharine disaster. Fortunately, under the direction of Hikari, the film is elegant and nimble with a melancholic script by Stephen Blahut that is coupled with attuned and tender-hearted performances by an ensemble led by Brendan Fraser. This is a beautiful and contemplative film with lovely messaging and a few sly twists.
Brendan Fraser is Phillip Vandarploveg, a middle-aged actor who moved to Japan to star in a toothpaste commercial seven years prior, subsequently appearing in a string of second rate productions and who is now struggling to find work.
Phillip’s face resembles a sad Emoji in human form. He tries to assimilate, and becomes fluent in Japanese. Still, we get the distinct feeling that he has stayed because there is no one for him back in America.
Shot in bright daylight in contrast to so many night-driven, neon-soaked Tokyo films, Phillip lands a job with a rental business run by efficient Shinji, played by Takahiko Hira, in a strong performance that reveals interesting layers along the way.
After a run of gigs played for laughs, Phillip is hired to pose as a journalist writing a magazine article on legendary but largely forgotten actor, Kikuo ( Akira Emoto), who is losing his memory.
He is also hired by a single mom (Shino Shinozaki) to play the father to her daughter, 11-year-old Mia (Shannon Gorman) to increase her chances in gaining admission to a prestigious Middle School that will go a long way to shaping her future.
RENTAL FAMILY is unabashedly sentimental. It is also a thoughtful and insightful presentation of this strange business of renting humans to help other humans. Its also a character study of a Gaijin in Japan (Gaijin is a Japanese term meaning foreigner or outsider) who knows he could live there forever and never fully grasp and understand the culture, but will never stop trying.
Marlon Brando famously said that we are all actors, and we lie constantly because the truth is harder to express. For Phillip the task is figuring out what to do when the lies must stop and truth awaits at every turn.
