I first learned about Japan’s rent-a-family industry from a 2018 article in The New Yorker, then from Conan O’Brien’s late-night show on TBS that same year, and finally from Werner Herzog’s ponderous and unclassifiable docu-drama on the subject, Family Romance, LLC (2020). It’s a curious practice designed to counteract the stigmas around mental health in Japanese society, which have fueled a nationwide epidemic of loneliness and unresolved psychological hang-ups. The service allows users to hire an actor to portray a family member or friend to address an emotional need. For instance, a widower might hire an actress to play his late wife to tell her goodbye, or a woman who cannot have children might employ child actors to play her kids, giving her the experience of motherhood. The practice raises all sorts of questions about its ethical implications and emotional consequences, especially when deception is involved. That’s the hook of Rental Family, a drama starring Brendan Fraser, fresh off his Oscar win for The Whale (2023). It’s a movie whose schmaltz serves both the material’s sentimentality and cleverly comments on how pretense can produce a genuine response.
This is the second feature-length film by Hikari, following her debut for Netflix, 37 Seconds (2019), which, alas, I have not seen. Co-written by Hikari and Stephen Blahut, the feel-good story follows Phillip (Fraser), an American actor who has worked and lived in Japan for seven years. Most famous for a well-known toothpaste commercial, he struggles to land more substantive roles. His latest gig entails attending a funeral as a “sad American,” which turns out to be a faux service for a man who wanted some perspective on life, staged by a company called Rental Family. The founder, Shinji (Takehiro Hira), offers Phillip more work because his company needs a “token white guy.” Phillip reluctantly agrees, understandably feeling strange about the whole thing. “You can’t just replace someone in your life,” he argues. The counterpoint is that transactional relationships and role-playing can produce real catharsis.
After all, what are movies but staged stories that provide an actual emotional response, despite our awareness that they’re fictional? Hikari’s film raises valid questions about the ethics of using such a service. It compares the industry to sex work in a brief but tender subplot, and links the service to the emotional impact of mimetic art—both illusions that are designed to produce a real outcome. Hikari grapples with these ideas in a mawkish package, questioning the use of actors in situations of emotional fraud while recognizing that, when used ethically, even fictional family members can provide the company’s clients with the support and play-acting therapy they need. Though it may seem strange to North American eyes, it’s normal in Japan to suppress emotions to preserve the delicate yet all-important social decorum and harmony (having grown up in the land of Minnesota Nice, this was all too familiar to me), and the Rental Family service seems uniquely suited to this cultural demand.
However, Rental Family becomes complicated when Phillip’s assignments require deception. His first major gig involves marrying a woman in a false ceremony. The woman, a lesbian who plans to move away with her wife, doesn’t want to come out to her parents. So she hires Rental Family to arrange a sham wedding in which she will marry Phillip for her parents’ benefit, then move away with her wife, leaving her parents happy and none the wiser. Maybe that’s a selfless choice for her parents’ benefit; maybe it’s a selfish choice, motivated by the fear of disappointment and confrontation. My first thought was this: What happens if the woman’s parents see Phillip in Japan after their daughter moves away? What if they recognize him from the popular toothpaste commercial? The screenwriters never have the characters ask these obvious questions upfront when Shinji hires Phillip, but quite predictably, they emerge as the story unfolds.
Whereas Herzog’s film explored this industry as a form of therapy, where the client knowingly hires an actor to fill an emotional gap in their lives, the clients in Rental Family engage in a kind of fraud and emotional manipulation. Sure, Phillip works with at least one client who just wants a friend with whom he can play video games and visit erotica shows. But most of his services involve some level of deceit. The main story centers on a single mother, Hitoni (Shino Shinozaki), who hires Phillip to play her estranged husband and the father of her 11-year-old daughter, Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), to help the girl get into an exclusive school. However, Mia does not know that Phillip is not her father, and the subterfuge requires that they form a father-daughter bond that becomes authentic—tragically so, given that Hitoni cannot hire Phillip forever. “I’m messing with people’s lives,” worries Phillip, who soon becomes so attached to Mia that he turns down better acting work in Korea to avoid abandoning the child who sees him as a father. Another gig finds Phillip enlisted by an aging actor’s daughter to play a journalist so that the once-famous star will feel the spotlight again. The actor believes Phillip will write a new celebration of his work in a film magazine. What happens if the actor discovers the article will never come out? In both cases, Phillip’s role could lead to a later sense of betrayal worse than the problem he was initially hired to resolve.
Rental Family plays like a soap opera at times. Hikari directs with a heavy hand, replete with glossy digital photography by d.p. Takurô Ishizaka and overwrought music by Jónsi and Alex Somers that punctuates every emotion with a cloying profundity. But the saccharine tone may echo the notes of make-believe at work in the story and industry, where an act proves just as effective as the real thing. Frasier’s performance just as broad. From his breakout role in Encino Man (1992) to The Mummy franchise, Fraser has never been a subtle actor outside of a few roles (see Gods and Monsters, 1998). His living cartoon quality means he works well in Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), but his presence in dramas varies. Here, Fraser’s kind, sensitive, yet wounded face exudes every emotion; his gestures are grand and caricature-like next to his more restrained costars. And since much of the story is told through Phillip as an emotional focal point, there’s an unintended sense of othering at work, placing many Japanese characters and aspects of Japan’s culture in a cloud of mystery. This is a shame, as I found the restrained subplots involving Phillip’s coworkers—his boss Shinji and fellow actor Aiko (Mari Yamamoto)—to be the film’s most nuanced and compelling scenes.
Even though much of Rental Family feels like a banal made-for-TV movie or pilot for a weekly dramedy, even the cheesiest programming can produce genuine feelings. Why else does the Hallmark Channel remain so popular? The film sets out to tug the viewer’s heartstrings, and I could feel the tugging from my seat. Sometimes, my gut reaction was to resist the pull. Other times, I couldn’t help but be moved. Hikari never delves too deeply into her characters’ internal lives, preferring shots of them pondering the cityscape or walking in deep contemplation. It can feel superficial. But that’s fitting, since her film is about how surfaces and performance can have legitimate emotional results. This is a thoughtful film that gave me pause and made me question the validity of staged emotions, performance, and simulation. I’m still having an inner debate about the degree to which these themes about the power of pretense influenced Hikari’s sometimes cornball aesthetic. But the feelings it produced in me were genuine, and I suppose that’s what matters most.
