Brendan Fraser’s mournful, basset-hound face finds a loving home in this affecting fable from director/writer Hikari. Fraser plays Phillip Vanderploeg, an American actor struggling to make a niche for himself in Tokyo. He’s the definitive stranger in a strange land – though at least he can speak Japanese – and parts are few and far between (a career highlight was his flying superhero who advertises toothpaste). A solitary Phillip can often be found drowning his sorrows in local bars.
But all is not quite lost. Phillip gets an offer he can’t afford to refuse when he’s approached by Rental Family Inc, whose boss Shinji (Takehiro Hira, pictured below) flatteringly explains that he needs “a token white guy”. The agency specialises in supplying actors to play roles in real-life situations, which can include marriages and divorces. And indeed funerals, which is where Phillip makes his debut as “sad American”, joining (though he arrives late) a room-full of mourners. But it’s no ordinary ceremony, since the “corpse” is merely playing dead in order to miraculously come back to life to receive the praise and adoration of the attendees.
As Shinji puts it, “we sell emotion”, and it soon transpires that this is an acting job where the role-playing starts to bleed over into real life. Nor is it only Phillip who’s playing a part. When he finds himself recruited to play the groom, “Brian Callahan”, to bride Yoshie, he discovers that this is because Yoshie needs to be married to make it acceptable to leave her family, so that she can then be united with the lesbian lover she has already secretly married. Seeing the happiness he has brought to the two women brings Phillip an additional reward beyond the mere fee.
The moral maze grows considerably more complicated when he takes on the role of father (called Kevin) to Mia, the young daughter of single mother Hitomi (Shino Shinozaki). Hitomi wants to get Mia enrolled in an exclusive school, for which a husband and father-figure is essential. When they attend the interview with the governors, she warns “Kevin” to just shut up and listen, but he’s been rather smitten with young Mia and can’t resist adding his own paean of praise to her attributes. It works and Mia is accepted, but Phillip finds he has acquired a genuine bond of affection and responsibility for the girl.
When Hitomi, who feels he’s getting too close to Mia, insists that he break off contact and tell her he’s returning to the USA, it’s a moment of unalloyed anguish. “Why do adults always lie?” demands Mia (affectingly played by Shannon Gorman). “Because it’s a whole lot easier than telling the truth,” confesses Phillip.
Matters come to the boil when Phillip is tasked with pretending to be a journalist writing a profile of veteran actor Kikuo Hasegawa (played by veteran actor Akira Emoto, pictured above with Fraser). Phillip finds himself helping Kikuo to evade the supervision of his controlling daughter Masami (Sei Matobu), but ends up getting arrested on a kidnapping charge.
A heady denouement brings the Rental Family crew going to Phillip’s aid by doing what they do best, while Shinji is forced to re-evaluate the way his whole life is a teetering structure of fakery. A delicate and shrewdly-observed web of comedy, irony, tragedy and cultural confusion, Rental Family is a little treasure.
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