Buckle up, folks. We’ve got a lot to unpack with this one. The premise alone will take no small measure of explaining.
Rental Family is the sophomore feature of co-writer/director/producer Hikari, after her debut 37 Seconds got lost on Netflix in the abyss of 2020. Exec Producer Brendan Fraser stars as Phillip Vandarploeug, an American actor primarily known for a Japanese toothpaste commercial. Indeed, the commercial was so successful and so lucrative that he’s been stuck in Japan for the past seven years, taking checks from whatever production needs a token white American guy.
Let’s pause for a moment. First of all, commercials are famously lucrative work for actors. The right ad campaign can set an actor up for years’ worth of residuals. And while Phillip isn’t exactly rich or famous, he doesn’t seem to be starving either. He’s getting paid and he’s getting gigs, but he doesn’t feel artistically fulfilled with the commercial gigs and American bit parts he’s getting. I might further add that as an American man living in Japan, he’s visibly lonely.
Anyway, Phillip gets hired by a rental family agency led by Shinji Tada, played by Takehiro Hira. What’s a rental family agency? Well, the agency is responsible for actors who get paid to play out a role in someone else’s life. The idea is that sometimes, we have a deep emotional need that can only be filled by a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a mentor, or someone else with that kind of deep-seated emotional connection. For instance, if you’ve got something you’ve always wanted to say to your dead grandparent, you can call up a rental family agency and hire someone to play your grandparent so you can talk with them instead.
(Side note: While I’m not remotely fluent in Japanese, I’ve seen enough “Neon Genesis Evangelion” to know that “shinji” translates to “believe”. That is so thematically appropriate, it’s beautiful.)
Before you brush off the idea as something outlandishly crazy, you should know that this is a very real thing. Rental family agencies have been a part of Japanese culture for the past 35 years. Why would anyone agree to any part of such a business? Well, it seems that mental illness is even more stigmatized in Japan than it is here in the States, and not everyone is willing or able to see a proper therapist. For another thing, a rental family agency is a convenient way for clients to save face in a culture where reputation, order, and etiquette are everything.
Case in point: Here in the USA, we’re familiar with the concept of a gay person who pretends to be in a relationship in a straight person to placate their homophobic relatives. Such a straight person would typically be called a “beard”. Over in Japan, that’s a legit service that some actor from a rental family agency would provide.
As the plot unfolds, we see Phillip and his colleagues provide their clients with all manner of services in all manner of capacities. Shinji says that their company sells emotion, but what they’re really selling is connection. They provide friendship. They provide validation. They show their clients what it’s like to really be seen as a person. Yes, it’s all fictional. But like any other kind of performance art, it’s a lie that conveys a deeper emotional truth.
On the other hand, we’ve got the “apology services”. This is a type of gig in which the client has done something terribly awful that they feel compelled to atone for. For instance, if a corporate executive has done something wildly illegal and/or unethical, and they’d rather go through the motions of punishment with a paid actor instead of confessing to actual law enforcement. Or if a husband cheats on his wife, so he gets all the catharsis of confessing to the infidelity while protecting his wife and/or mistress from actual heartbreak. So, instead of a lie that conveys the truth, it’s a lie that helps cover up the truth.
It’s unfortunately true that for all of this — most especially with the apology services — there’s the potential for real harm. There’s the danger of spontaneous physical abuse. There’s the possibility of emotional attachment beyond what’s professional or safe. Even in the best case scenario, both sides could be so easily heartbroken when the contract runs out and the rental connection is dissolved.
What’s worse, a lot of clients are hired on behalf of concerned family members. As a direct result, the hired actors could be working directly and making palpable emotional connections with people who’ve got no idea that this is all fake. And if all goes according to plan, they’ll never know it’s fake. When we’re dealing with such volatile and sensitive emotions built on so many huge lies, there could be some catastrophic damage when the lies come undone.
Then again, it all comes back to that grey area between truth and fiction. When it comes to such mercurial concepts as emotion and pain, it’s not always easy to tell one from the other, or when one is used in service of the other. Truth and lies can both hurt. Just as healing and trauma can both hurt. The difference is that in the long run, the truth can only heal while lies can only injure.
In the middle of all this, we’ve got Mia, played by newcomer Shannon Gorman. She’s a young half-Japanese girl whose American father ran off to places unknown. And now Phillip has to step in and play her absentee father so that both parents can be present for Mia’s application to a prestigious school. Trouble is, Mia has no idea that Phillip is an actor. She supposedly has to go on with the rest of her life thinking this guy is the actual father who walked out on them when she was a baby. The charade plays out more or less exactly as you’d expect.
At the same time, there’s the matter of Kikuo Hasegawa, played by the great Akira Emoto. Kikuo is an aging actor with dementia, woefully afraid of losing relevance. Thus Kikuo’s daughter (Masami, played by Sei Matobu) hires Phillip to play a journalist writing an article about Kikuo. It’s the same deal: As far as Kikuo’s concerned, there is no gig and Phillip is exactly what he says he is.
In both of these overarching cases, the kicker is that Phillip grew up without a father. And as the plot unfolds, he finds a surrogate father figure in Kikuo. For that matter, Phillip is a single and childless man who steps up to be a surrogate father figure for Mia. He was hired to fill a void and fulfill these deeply emotional needs for his clients, and his unwitting clients end up doing the same for him. Sure, there are awful risks for catastrophic emotional damage (see above), but it’s still heartwarming to see an actor get such emotional and artistic fulfillment out of his profession in a way he never thought possible.
Brendan Fraser is of course the heart and soul of the movie. You love to see such a sweet and talented guy in a career renaissance like this. Fraser’s dynamic and searingly emotional performance will be the main selling point, but the rest of the cast is worth staying for.
Most American audiences probably won’t be familiar with Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Akira Emoto, or any of the other supporting actors. Of course nobody will be familiar with Gorman, as it’s her first movie. You’ll just have to trust me when I say there isn’t a single dud in this cast. Literally everyone in this movie — down to the last background actor — comes out looking like a world-class star.
The script is a delight. Sure, some of the reveals are telegraphed and a few storylines play out in expected ways, but the reveals are nonetheless timed superbly and the journeys in getting there are all a joy. And we do get one or two genuinely surprising twists that had my jaw on the floor.
I might further add that Japan looks freaking beautiful. We’ve got a wide spread of urban and rural locales on display here, and they’re all superbly photographed. It’s genuinely impressive how far and wide the filmmakers went in using this premise as a showcase for Japanese culture.
There’s a lot to like about Rental Family. The script is thought-provoking, the visuals are beautiful, the actors are all phenomenal, and the heartfelt themes are impeccably bolstered by the setting. It sucks that the film is already getting pushed out of theaters by the oncoming rush of awards contenders, and I can only hope it doesn’t get lost in the scrum for too long.
Check it out.