RENTAL FAMILY Review: Brendan Fraser Delivers Another Unimpeachably Winning Performance

Sometime in the 1990s, rental agencies in Japan spontaneously formed around the singular idea of renting people — or to be more exact, renting their time — to act as stand-ins, role-players, and/or performers in everyday events, from marriages to funerals and everything in between, effectively monetizing relationships into commercial transactions. They also answered an obvious need for human companionship and social connection. 

 

An unsurprising development in late-stage capitalism, where anything and everything that can be monetized is, Japanese-style rental agencies initially spread to other parts of Asia and eventually to the West, including the United States. Iconoclastic Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo, Woyzeck, Nosferatu the Vampyre) explored the same subject matter in Family Romance, LLC, to fascinatingly contradictory effect six years ago.   

 

Far more conventional and thus more straightforwardly satisfying on an emotional level, writer-director Hikari’s (37 Seconds) latest film, Rental Family, centers on an American expatriate, Phillip Vandarploeug (Brendan Fraser, essaying his first lead role since his Oscar win two years ago), an actor of middling talent and less than middling success, after he inadvertently joins the “rental family” agency of the title as a “sad American” at a pre-planned funeral where the corpse isn’t a corpse. He’s the client. 

 

It’s a richly amusing, if perplexing, experience for Phillip, a man clearly adrift in middle-aged ennui, taking the odd — emphasis on "odd" — job to pay the rent on his two-sizes-too-small apartment and the occasional take-out or delivery, but at least for Phillip, it’s enough to keep his fading dream of a steady acting gig alive. 

 

Phillip doesn’t exactly adjust to the demands of his new gig, even if it calls on him to “act,” to pretend he’s someone else, a Canadian-born husband-to-be for a Japanese woman from an ultra-conservative family, an in-person “friend” for a silent-verging-on-mute gamer, or more significantly for both Philip’s internal character arc and the film’s generous running time, pretending to be the long-lost, newly found biological father to a half-Caucasian 11-year-old girl, Mia Kawasaki (Shannon Mahina Gorman), and a mother (Shino Shinozaki) eager to ease Mia’s way into an elite middle school. 

 

Another stand-in role involves an ex-actor, Kikuo Hasegawa (Akira Emoto), nearing the twilight of his life. Concerned for her father’s mental and physical health, Kikuo’s daughter hires Phillip to pose as an American journalist writing a long-form, career-spanning article. The fictitious article will not only bolster Kikuo’s well-being but also remind him of his contributions to Japanese film. Simply put: Kikuo doesn’t want to be forgotten once he’s left this mortal plane for the next one. 

 

Throughout, Hikari cleverly, if somewhat reductively, explores the central conflict, the ethical dilemma that Phillip confronts on a nearly daily basis: Despite its transactional nature, trading time with strangers for money really isn’t the issue; actively and repeatedly lying is. Phillip's emotions become interwined in the active deceptions involving both Mia and Kikuo. Those deceptions create an ethical conundrum for Phillip, one that can't be easily resolved, at least not without causing the pain his role-playing was meant to avoid. 

 

As with any film where a 'Big Lie' plays a foundational role in the story and character arcs, the lie (or lies) will be exposed, confidence and trust betrayed, and feelings injured, possibly beyond repair or recovery. Where there’s a 'Big Lie' involved, however, there’s an all too predictable third act to handle and/or resolve the central conflict, usually combined with anger-laced accusations,  copious tears, and no amount of heartbreak. 

 

Rental Family certainly doesn't disappoint on that level, tying up every loose end, and every dangling plot thread before the end credits roll. And while it starts to feel overtly manipulative (as opposed to covertly), Rental Family undeniably works on a fundamentally emotional level, ultimately delivering a generous, even optimistic ending for Phillip and everyone in his immediate orbit that feels as well-deserved as it does inevitable. 

 

Hikari excels on a narrative level, keeping exposition to a minimum, especially questions surrounding Phillip’s background beyond the basics (e.g., a successful ad campaign as a toothpaste-related superhero) or why he decided to remain in Japan and not return to the United States. Undoubtedly, de-emphasizing Phillip’s backstory will prove an irritant to some moviegoers who expect or simply want more. That decision, however, allows more adventurous moviegoers to either fill in the details for themselves or to be carried along by Fraser’s nuanced performance, allowing everything from body language to dialogue delivery to facial expressions to tell us everything we need to know. 

 

For an expressively transparent actor like Fraser, Phillip overlaps almost perfectly with Fraser's range, talents, and experience. Fraser convincingly sells Phillip’s internal struggles, his loneliness, his emotional vulnerability, and a life lived in quiet desperation before he joins the rental family of the tile.

 

Through missteps, stumbles, and the occasional failure, Phillip unexpectedly finds a stand-in family of his own: in one of the agency’s employees, Aiko (Mari Yamamoto), an agency employee and Phillip’s trainer in the agency’s idiosyncratic procedures, and Shinji (Takehiro Hira), the agency’s by-the-book rule follower. Change comes to them, too.

 

Rental Family opens Friday, November 21, only in movie theaters, via Searchlight Pictures.