It must be bizarre for people in Japan or Korea to see movies made about mundane aspects of society for them though filtered through an American lens that is astounded by them. The rental family is one of those concepts -a not uncommon service in Japan whereby actors are hired to play a friend or family member for a client for reasons ranging from social etiquette to companionship to a means of working through grief. And it is something that feels strange and even unethical to many a westerner, especially for those aspects that require deception or that interact with sex work outside the traditional purview of acting. To impose that moral judgement from a western perspective would be arrogant and condescending -as though we have any real high ground to stand on. That is why it is important that Rental Family, a movie basically designed to teach westerners about this thing, is directed by a Japanese filmmaker, whose own assessment of the service is thus unclouded by cultural bias.
Hikari does take the western perspective into account and takes it seriously -it is her second American project after directing three episodes of the excellent series Beef. She is aptly positioned to approach her subject matter here from neutral waters much like Lulu Wang did with the similarly-themed The Farewell. And she takes in fairly both the emotional and ethical problems one might identify whilst also touching on some tender virtues those of us especially outside of Japan might not be able to appreciate otherwise.
Our dumb western avatar here is Philip Vandarploeug played by Brendan Fraser, an American actor without many connections back home who lives and works in Tokyo, largely in menial token white person roles, though having had one big break as the mascot of a popular toothpaste commercial. Drawn to the higher than average pay he is recruited by Shinji (Takehiro Hira) to his rental family agency. Resistant to the work initially, he manages to overcome his biases -filling several roles for the agency’s clients, including as a beard for a lesbian pressured by her parents into a traditional marriage, as a journalist and eventual friend interviewing a bitter retired actor, and most prominently as the long-lost father to a young mixed-race girl with whom he develops a sweet and hazardously close relationship.
It is the intimacy combined with deception that is the most difficult aspect of the job for Philip, who can’t help his guilt and emotional attachments with what is just a job for him but something real for the clients. Shinji explains early a part of the purpose of rental families is as a kind of substitute to therapy, which is heavily stigmatized in Japan. It’s seen as a way of better easing people through their issues, and Hikari does give real credence to that, bizarre and intrusive though some of Philip’s roles may seem. The effect on the actor Kikuo (Akira Emoto) is palpable -it maybe doesn’t ease his depression around his obscurity but he does get a friend who can empathize, and who is respectful and familiar with his work. Same for one guy with whom he is paid to play video games
But the heart of the story is in that relationship with Mia Kawasaki, played precociously by Shannon Mahina Gorman. Philip slips into the kindly father looking to make amends a bit too well -the connection having as profound an impact on him as it does on her. And this is where Hikari is a bit more critical of the rental family practice, because while this bond formed with a child is healing and valuable, it can be much more traumatic when it must eventually be revealed as false. And a guy like Philip is not cut out for that. When he told Shinji he was wrong for this kind of work, he was correct -but not in the way he thought. Like Fraser is often perceived to be in real-life, Philip is an extremely earnest, emotionally open teddy bear of a human being, and in taking on these roles he adopts the emotional availability and the responsibility of them as well. But it’s not exactly something discouraged by the job requirement. Hikari doesn’t offer a clear statement on the effect of that, and her storytelling does ultimately smooth it over a little too cleanly. But it is a challenge presented with relative authenticity, especially in the context of someone like Philip -perhaps unaware of how much he does crave these connections he neither seems to have back in America or has forged for himself in Japan.
The story follows a few predictable beats. At one point, Philip gives up a big job for some K-drama -the kind of thing he’s been chasing all these years- in order to do his duties for his rental clients (and Mia specifically). And both Shinji and his passionate assistant Aiko (Mari Yamamoto) come to recognize the faults in their service and approach it with more nuance (for Aiko the moment of truth comes when posing as the other woman of a man revealing his affair to his wife). Inevitably, the truth of Philip’s lies to Mia come out as well, though not in the most conventional manner. Still, the movie gets by through these -partly through the nice performances by Hira, Yamamoto, Fraser -well in his element, and especially Gorman. But also because Hikari’s filmmaking is very measured and enticing. Though the movie is thoroughly American, it never feels like a novel westerner’s image of Japan. This is due to its thematic interests in the healthy cultural contrast of its subject, but also visually in how it hones in on very ordinary contexts of Tokyo. There are very little of the extravagances or -for lack of a better word- tourist sensibilities that are occasionally found in these sort of documents of another culture. Yet Hikari’s approach to drama balances this with very American moments and imagery -such as at a festival where Philip takes Mia and the two have a few very wholesome moments. It also stands out just a little bit that Mia often engages with Philip in fluent English despite her first language being Japanese. Fraser does speak a little Japanese in the movie, but there is no interest by the film to alienate his American audience by having him deliver broadly in another language.
There’s nothing spontaneous or radical to Rental Family, beyond perhaps the very concept it touches on and respectfully interrogates, but it is a nice and charming movie that does a good job presenting its subject matter in a fair way and exploring the drama that comes with pairing that with a western sense of ethics. In the midst of this it is an unconventional but sweet father-daughter narrative. It is not as interested in Philip’s character as much as perhaps it should be -we never do understand exactly who he is, where he comes from, and why he is in Japan entirely alone in his life -but it isn’t ultimately a goal Hikari sets out to ponder. What’s important is the conversation she has, with two cultures and the audiences of both. In a time of greater xenophobic isolationism -particularly in the west- that is a valuable thing to represent.
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