​All in the ‘Rental Family’

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Japanese director Hikari, born in Osaka and originally named Mitsuyo Miyazaki, is poised for a significant stateside breakthrough with “Rental Family,” the new film she co-wrote with Stephen Blahut. Already generating some limited (and possibly wishful) Oscar nomination buzz for lead Brendan Fraser, “Rental Family” joins “The Phoenician Scheme,” “One Battle After Another,” and “Sentimental Value” in a curious group of recent movies dealing to one degree or another with father-daughter relationships. In the film, Fraser plays a Tokyo-based actor who takes a gig at an agency that provides services to clients in need of real-life support. I was previously aware of the phenomenon of paid mourners, one kind of “rental performance” example illustrated in the movie, but Fraser’s Phillip Vandarploeug gets in over his head when he agrees to pose as the previously absent father of a little girl.

From start to finish, Hikari's direction is unhurried. “Rental Family” spends considerable time laying out the expectations for Phillip’s new roles, giving the viewer an opportunity to make the same adjustments experienced by the character to the unusual new direction in his chosen occupation. In one scenario, Phillip steps in as the groom of a secret lesbian. In another, Phillip hangs out with a lonely man, playing videogames and helping tidy up his apartment. In yet another, Phillip assumes the guise of a journalist writing a career retrospective of an aging actor struggling with dementia. That last thread will become nearly as vital to the plot as Phillip’s most demanding role yet: pretending to be the dad that Mia Kawasaki (Shannon Mahina Gorman) has never known.

Mia’s mother Hitomi (Shino Shinozaki) reaches out to Rental Family agency owner Shinji (Takehiro Hira) to help enlist an American to step in as the other parent of her hāfu child with the ultimate goal of securing Mia’s admission to a prestigious boarding school. Films from within and outside Japan have tackled the prejudice and derision faced by mixed-race offspring. Others don’t focus on genetics as a plot driver (see: the title character “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension,” Edna Mode in “The Incredibles,” and Quentin Tarantino’s O-Ren Ishii). Hikari alludes to Mia being bullied, but generally speaking, “Rental Family” joins the ethos of the aforementioned films.

One might imagine that Hikari would draw more deeply on her own acting background to unpack and excavate a variety of psychological layers that swirl around the ethical considerations of constructing an imaginary identity for an unwitting “scene” partner. While the majority of those who hire someone from Rental Family are fully aware of the artifice, several are in the dark. The movie goes out of its way to explain why Hitomi lies to Mia, but some opportunities are definitely missed. On the plus side, Hikari and Blahut make space for a few satisfying surprises involving both Shinji and Phillip’s agency coworker Aiko (Mari Yamamoto).

For the most part, however, Fraser’s warmth and affability does the heavy lifting when “Rental Family” plays safe and predictable, which is nearly the whole of the running time. More often than not, Hikari sands off the sharp edges, resulting in an overall experience more akin to the programming found on the Hallmark Channel than the searing, penetrating depth of Ryusuke Hamaguchi or Hirokazu Koreeda. Even so, “Rental Family” smartly avoids the easy fallback of Phillip’s status as a hulking gaijin/gaikokujin to make any pronouncements about cultural difference versus the universal qualities of love and family — blood or chosen.