In the early writing stages of “Rental Family” — a film that springboards off a very real practice in Japan where customers pay for someone to play the part of a chum, relative, fiancée or a mourner at a funeral, director and co-screenwriter Hikari zeroed in on the more serious and dramatic elements of that phenomenon.
Then, she eased up on that.
The shift came about after Hikari and writing partner Stephen Blahut intensified their research and gained broader perspectives from those who are involved in the “rent-a-family industry,” either as customers are providers. The industry, born in Japan in the early `990s, now accounts for about 300 businesses in the country.
Ideas ping-ponged about and the screenplay underwent various changes, all as a tumultuous period of isolation and upheaval spread out across the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown. Not so ironically, a primary theme in “Rental Family” is our need to get out there, find authentic connections and form tight-knit communities beyond bloodlines.
“COVID really isolated us,” Hikari said during a recent interview in San Francisco. “That was our biggest hit — (along with) our social anxiety — and from there it really expanded and now it is the norm to speak to friends who are even in the same room (and) you’re texting each other.”
The comedy-drama opens Nov. 21 in theaters.
Hikari sought to give accurate representation of the rental family business and its clients and is well aware of how influential movies can be. That’s partly the reason she didn’t want “Rental Family” to become a major downer. As with “37 Seconds,” her 2019 debut feature about a 23-year-old manga artist with cerebral palsy who explores her sexual desires., Hikari wants her movies to inspire people.
“I like to make a movie that is meaningful for certain people so I can be part of contributing to the community, where I can push people to live a little bit more and look around and (realize) life is not all bad,” she said. The director visited the Bay Area last month to see “Rental Family” receive an enthusiastic response at the Mill Valley Film Festival.
Brendan Fraser’s disarming performance helps anchor “Rental Family.” An earlier version of tje script had called called for a younger actor but Hikari and her writing partner eventually opted for someone closer to middle-aged and were thrilled to get Fraser, fresh off a best actor Oscar win “The Whale.” Here, he plays lonely American actor Phillip Vandarploeug, who goes to work for a Tokyo-based rental family agency owned by a stressed-out Shinji (Takehiro Hira of “Shogun”). Phillip splits his time between two assignments, playing father figure to 11-year-old Mia (Shannon Gorman) whose single mother aims to get her into a prestigious school, and as a journalist interviewing a once-famous actor (Akira Emoto) whose mind is starting to slip.
As Hikari revealed in a conversation after the Mill Valley Film Festival screening, the popularity of hiring someone to play a part in life might be linked to how inaccessible it can be in Japan for people to engage in conversations with a professional about their problems and feelings.
“In Japan, we don’t really have a form of therapy system,” she said.
Hikari also wanted to focus on creating a “fish-out-of-water” scenario since she is familiar with the phenomenon, having moved from Osaka to Utah where she eventually found a network of friends in an environment where she was the only Asian at her high school. Her personal connection to the film doesn’t end there: Mia’s story is partly inspired by her own since Hikari was raised by a single mom who told her that her father was dead when he actually left the family after meeting another woman, she said.
Through the film, Hikari sought to call attention to various facets of Japanese life and culture, including its food (a scene in which okonomiyaki — a pancake dish — gets served will make your mouth water) and the dogged efforts by parents to get their child into a good school.
“If they come from a wealthy family it’s all about children’s education,” she said. “The single mom not really getting into those schools is a bit more difficult. Obviously they won’t say ‘You’re a single parent’ or ‘your kid’s not going to get into school.’”
Hikari finds that those ideals are changing rapidly in Japan.
Casting actors she could trust was also essential to Hikari, and she feels fortunate to have landed Hira and the extra-busy Mari Yamamoto (Apple TV+’s “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” and “Pachinko”), who plays Phillip’s disenchanted co-worker Aiko. Hikari, who also directed three episodes of Netflix’s award-winning series “Beef,” was especially impressed by how well Yamamoto and Fraser played off each other.
“I really like to give freedom to the actors,” she said. “I watch how they read, who they are as a person. That’s always inspired me to what kind of tone this movie is. Although I do have an idea of what the final product will look like, it really is the collaboration that built the movie to the way we put it in a theater. This was such a beautiful experience.”
While the rental family business can be viewed by some as simply a transactional exchange, Hikari sees something more nuanced and special potentially playing out.
“Let’s say we are fake families,” she hypothesizes. “You’re going to be the father of this client and I’m going to be the sister. Then this family — because they’re coming to visit this client every once a year or every two months — is becoming a family in a weird way. This phenomenon is also ‘found family ‘and they’re creating this giant community within that. I find that so beautiful.”
Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.