RENTAL FAMILY – Review by Sherin Nicole
People wear so many masks—oftentimes, we wear them with our loved ones: because we don’t want to hurt them, because there are things we’re afraid to say, or we don’t want to be a burden, because we think there are parts of us they’ll be ashamed of. Rental Family turns those masks into a business, and the grace of these service providers is they allow you to be fully you. In these reenactments of life, we are free to be and to discover ourselves—because your “rented family” won’t judge you.
In each vignette, director Hikari and her co-writer, Stephen Blahut, focus on the heart of humanity and who we are by exploring the loneliness that draws us together—seeking connection. In my favorite set of scenes, when Philip (Brendan Fraser) looks out at the people in other apartments across from his, it feels like he’s seeing a mini-multiverse, and he’s imagining how he might fit into each of those worlds. It’s cleverly communicative filmmaking, a symbolic way of alleviating isolation. All of those “boxes” contain different lives, and through the Rental Family service, many lives are tied together.
In the film, veteran actor Akira Emoto has a dialogue about the “eight million gods” in Shinto religion—the god of the ocean, god of the wind, god of the trees, and then the god in all of us. That is when I realized, Rental Family is about finding yourself in other people. Interwoven with the theme of chosen family abating loneliness, it’s an entirely beautiful concept within a lovely film.
