Rental Family, despite threatening to tip off the tracks quite a few times, is a rewarding film driven by an uncommonly gentle performance.
The premise is rather odd but conveyed swiftly. Phillip (Brendan Fraser) is a journeyman actor living in Tokyo, Japan. He has been there for some years. It is made clear that he is both professionally and personally unsuccessful. He is taking whatever work abounds, and there is no much of it, nor is it particularly good.
Then he comes across the wares of an agency that ‘rents’ out people, as it were. Phillip’s services are wanted, as he can play a variety of tall, broad Americans. The film doesn’t drag us through the umming and ahhing as to whether Phillip agrees to the work. The movie needs him to agree, so he quickly does.
And so two main ‘jobs’ kick into gear. In one, Phillip plays a father to a child for the purposes of a school admission interview. In another, he plays an interviewer to an old writer (Akira Emoto) to keep his comfort. Other jobs, like being a friend to a reclusive gamer, are shown briefly too with great effect.
A great deal of belief needs to be suspended in both scenarios. Even where the film acknowledges some of those complications, they are all resolved with typical movie-like convenience.
But there is a tacit understanding that this is one of those films, in that logic cannot dilute the message. The stronger of the subplots is the one involving the writer, culminating in a genuinely moving finale. Watch the way that Emoto – who almost steals the film from Fraser – closes his arc in the forest. Watch the way that Fraser watches him.
And so the film succeeds despite relying heavily on convenience and oversight. Fraser is wonderful; he plays more an observer than a character with charges, which allows the Tokyo setting and its characters to flourish. Those characters have their own twists and turns, none more than that of Shinji (Takehiro Hira), whose revelation gives just enough depth to the film when it needs it.
I enjoyed the film, which keeps the stakes rather low but retains a quiet Japanese sweetness.
THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL 