Japanese director Hikari's Rental Family is Oscar-winner Brendan Fraser's loving entry into another award-season competition for best actor consideration.
In this film, Fraser delivers an understated but highly affecting performance as a lonesome and emotionally isolated American actor living in Japan, piecing together a living with spot gigs in commercials and the occasional feature film or series.
Shinji offers Phillip, who does not connect with people below surface levels, more lucrative jobs that will require complex role-playing -- as the groom at a wedding the bride is staging to placate her parents so that she might begin her life with her female companion and as a gaming partner/friend for a recluse.
The film, which was written by Hikari and Stephen Blahut, spends most of its time on two jobs that lead Phillip into personal emotional spaces he hasn't visited in many years.
He is contracted by a mother (Shino Shinozakito) to pretend to be the long-absent father to her young biracial daughter (Shannon Mahina Gorman) so that she can get into a prestigious school.
He is also hired by a daughter (Sei Matobu) to play a journalist interviewing her aging actor father (Akira Emoto), who is drifting into dementia. Neither the child nor the actor knows Phillip is pretending.
As one might expect, the subterfuge eventually becomes untenable, and Phillip finds himself crossing lines that could spell disaster for him and the agency.
Fraser's Phillip is not expressive without a script, and when he's off the book, when his guard is down, the audience can read his thoughts and feelings on his face. At various times, his face reads perplexed, uncertain, determined, frightened, forlorn, elated, enamored, dazzled, and smitten.
Rental Family is a fine film with a fine star turn from a fine actor.
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