The horror is great: the body is still alive! Suddenly the man rises from the coffin that you have set up in the middle of the room. He also sits in the mourning community: Brendan Fraser as Phillip, an American actor in Japan that was ordered to the ceremony. At first he hardly knows how to behave between all the sad people. Then he falls out of all clouds when he witness this sloping resurrection. Everything just played and staged. A single simulation so that the supposed dead can finally feel some recognition and appreciation in life-and if only at his own fake berthrough. With this, the film sums up its tragicomic humor after just a few minutes.
“Rental Family” is the new work of Mitsuyo Miyazaki, better known as Hikari. In the past, the director was involved in the much-discussed Netflix series “Beef”. Now she deals with the appearance and its human relationships – and the continuously current topic of great -city loneliness. The script that she wrote with Stephen Blahut is constructed for empty spaces. Empty spaces in the biography, in the family structure, in everyday social life. And it would be laughed if man would not have the next questionable idea to make profit from it!
His new boss trusts Phillip Vandarpleog (Brendan Fraser) not only to play a role in front of the camera, but also in everyday life.
Phillip VandarPleog (Brendan Fraser) spends his days in Tokyo in the always the same, barren routines. The drama business is no longer so good for the former advertising consume. Right from the start you can see how he spends his break in a grotesque costume and with a sad look. It is difficult for him to build social relationships. Finally, Phillip becomes part of an agency that rented actors to paying customers, for example to replace absent -minded family members. Phillip is increasingly beginning to think about his own worldview and his different roles …
Paid love and attention
Anyone who reads the short content summary of “Rental Family” could experience a déjà-vu. In fact, the premise has been discussed and played through a few times in recent years. The most obvious is the comparison with Werner Herzog's “Family Romance, LLC”, who also dealt with the phenomenon of human rental in Tokyo. But Bernhard Wenger's “Pfau – am I real?” Albrecht Schuch recently dealt with a comparable business model and the pitfalls of the human role -playing game.
In a direct comparison, “Rental Family” unfortunately falls off. This is mainly because Hikari's film shy away from confrontation with the audience. The scope of the whole topic breaks down a little frequently and under complex to a few dialogues. This does not take real irritation. A central discussion point, for example, when it comes to comparing acting and prostitution, is quickly put on aside. The human subject, its role -playing and self -image are made transparent, but are hardly dismantled or demonstrated in its worn connections. All the uncomfortable facets are present, but they are rather half -cooked instead of enduring their tension.
When he plays the absent father for a little girl, Phillip is finally impossible to distinguish between played and real feelings.
At the same time, one can say that the fabric itself is still extremely attractive and interesting for a feature film – and “Rental Family” has its strengths and moving moments as a character portrait. One of these strengths is undoubtedly the game of Brendan Fraser, which can wear and concentrate the entire film, although its script repeatedly falls into so many small strands, episodic vignettes and figure arrangements.
Fraser is simply the perfect line -up for this figure, which basically trots through the world as a kind of large, melancholic teddy bear. You can find this in a predictable manner, but Fraser fills its role well and surprisingly nuanced – especially in the last act of the film when it comes to developing an attitude towards your own biography. Behind Fraser's celebrated Oscar performance in “The Whale”, for example, this calmer, only at first glance does not have to hide.
Less discourse, more feeling
“Rental Family” breaks down the topic of the relationships awarded and rented, especially on the embodied and felt feeling. It leads away from the discourse to acting and authenticity to the flowing tears. Sometimes you get the impression that the top topic described, which only offers plenty of attack from an economic point of view, serves to unleash all kinds of heartache between new friendships and election families. Only what can you say: Many of these scenes do not miss their effect.
The emotional kitsch is rather essential part of a countermovement that the film takes. The supposedly true feeling is compared to the cool business relationship. First, it is still being taboo about closer connections to the customers. But what happens if the distance arranged is suddenly no longer possible? If Fraser's figure struggles to captivate his caring connection to a little girl whose father is supposed to embody when ordering? How truthful can a feeling be even if it is based on a paid basis?
Self -discovery trip with Brendan Fraser
Especially when it comes to the aesthetic access to loneliness and illusion of its overcoming, “Rental Family” unfortunately then shifts through all sorts of interchangeable images. The Tokyo, in which Brendan Fraser is traveling, basically turns out to be an aesthetic cliché of accelerated shots of masses on road crossings, karaoke bars, restaurants and a few holy sites. Hikari's staging finds a highlight, especially when this urban jungle is left. Surprisingly, these are scenes that are also about the absence of pictures, namely from pictures in their own memory, fading memories.
At the latest here a circle closes at the beginning. The gap and empty space in a system remains, but suddenly there is something in humans when it is to be filled in the media. Regardless of whether the media are old photographs or an hired person who becomes a projection surface-you learn together with it to accept that the so-tun-obserer has long since turned into reality. The participants find the deception to themselves, if only for a short time.
Conclusion: “Rental Family” does not add any significant thoughts to the topic of paid and rented family members and confidants. For this, however, Hikari's tragicomedy captivates with a touching character portrait, which is particularly thanks to a well -laid out Brendan Fraser in the leading role.