“rental family”
a night well spent is probably a night spent on praiseworthy films. starring brendan fraser, rental family is a heartwarming tale on love. i love brendan fraser as an actor. i think i have only seen two of his movies: one is the whale, and the second one is rental family. both share one important trait: they aim to evoke the feeling of vulnerability in the audience. what i’m trying to say that, i cried my eyeballs out throughout both movies, to the point that all the tissues i could find were depleted. honestly, that is embarrassing. because i don’t think anyone else was touched as i was, or in other words, nobody else in the movie theater seemed to cry as hard as i was, making me seem like some emotional creature trying to find a convenient outlet. or maybe i just happen to have a very low bar for shedding tears. call me sentimental…
the film, of course, bears the intention to stimulate tears and feelings in the audience. rental family is not just the title of the film, but the title of the firm that the film aims to portray. the firm provides impersonating services. the point of rental family is to offer satisfaction to the client who is seeking such impersonator. here are some of the prominent services that i remember from the film:
(1) a single japanese mother (presumably left by a white husband) has to hire a person to impersonate as her husband, or her daughter Mia’s dad. apparently, to enter a certain competitive school, both parents have to be present to showcase the potential for a good student.
(2) the daughter of an aging actor has to hire someone to impersonate as a journalist. the “journalist” is eager to listen to and document the life stories of the actor. the core responsibility of the “journalist” is to feign awe and interest in her father, and to publish a profile for him. the actor father has alzheimer’s.
(3) an unfaithful husband is requested by his wife to show her the mistress that wrecks so much havoc in the marriage. scared to bring the real mistress to his wife, the husband hires an impersonator to be his mistress. the wife aims to slap the mistress’s face. the impersonator receives the slap.
(4) a reclusive, lonely man needs the company of a friend. the impersonator is a friend whose responsibility is to spend quality time with the recluse, i.e. playing video games together, seeing showgirls together.
(5) the boss of rental family hires a mother and a son to be his family, namely, to be his wife and his son. he requests them to give him a warm welcome and feign the pretense of a happy family after he gets home from work.
(6) a lesbian requests someone to impersonate as a heterosexual husband in a wedding ceremony. she prefers not to come out to her family, and to show her parents that she can build a life with a man like everybody else.
those are a few examples that i can remember from the movie. one could say the service serves emotional ends. one could also say it is only a plain, simple service that uses money to solve a problem. my takeaway is the heartfelt performance of brendan fraser, who in the movie is a wanderer in a foreign country, looking to build human connection.