The Western world has an ambivalent relationship with Japan. The country is incredibly overrepresented in our culture compared to many other Asian nations, but many subtler aspects of its culture continue to be quite obscure. The new film by the director simply notes how Hikari talks about one of these “subpelle” aspects of Japanese culture, the phenomenon of Rental Families. The film is produced by Searchlight Pictures for The Walt Disney Company Italy.
Rental Family: un ingaggio esistenziale
Tokyo, an urban agglomeration of 24 million people who every day rise and plunge into their complex life. Among them is Philip, an American actor who arrived in the city seven years ago whose career began after a promising start. Man spends his life between auditions and figurative roles, silently observing the lives of others from the window of his mini-apartment. This until it receives an engagement from Rental Family, a curious agency that offers people actors who play a role they need in life.
In his work he will be making a husband to a girl queer who wants to calm the parents and as a friend to a recruit passionate about combat videogames; he will pretend a journalist to interview an old actor forgotten by all and will interpret the role of the father of a child who is trying to be admitted to a prestigious private school. And if the company’s policy of not getting involved, in these relations Philip will find much more than he had bargained for.
Buoni sentimenti
I don’t know what magical power Brendan Fraser developed in this second phase of his career, but it seems to have the supernatural ability to generate good feelings simply by appearing on the screen. Surely Hikari with this power went on a wedding, since the most soothing definition for Rental Family is just that a little old school of movies of good feelings. What brings, of course, all the qualities and defects of the genre: a somewhat discouraged emotionality, of course, but also heart in the right place, characters easy to love and also some twists of scene that I sincerely did not expect to see coming.
In short, whether it is natural or parallel with the span of his career, it is no doubt that to distinguish Rental Family from a thousand other similar films is the former star of La Mummia. Fraser is able to sell the character of Philip perfectly, his solitude and his desire to connect, his doubts and his being almost a teenager in the body of a mature man. And this is because, even if we do not want to admit it, but all of us sometimes still feel like this: all of us, every now and then, feel the overwhelming need to be touched by the lives of others.
Il cast
Brendan Fraser is Philip, unemployed actor who leads a lonely life. Takehiro Hira is Shinji, director of the Dental Family, who seems to be able to perfectly separate life and work. Mari Yamamoto is Aiko, partner of Philip to the agency. Akira Emoto is an old movie star on the sunset avenue, while Shino Shinozaki is Hitomi, mother of a rebel child Philip finds himself doing your father.
L’articolo Rental family: touching the lives of others – The film review at cinema proviene da Dituttounpop.it.
