Latest news with #RentalFamily
Time Out
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Out
This Oscar-winner's new movie is getting a gala at the London Film Festival
Brendan Fraser's career renaissance has already taken in a Oscar win for his performance in The Whale and now his new movie is getting a big gala at this year's BFI London Film Festival. Rental Family, which stars Fraser as a struggling American actor living in modern-day Tokyo, will be the LFF's American Express gala on Thursday, October 16. Directed by Hikari, the Japanese filmmaker behind Netflix drama 37 Seconds, Rental Family has Fraser's down-and-out thesp finding work with a Japanese rental family company, playing stand-in roles for strangers. 'As he immerses himself in his clients' worlds, he begins to form genuine bonds that blur the lines between performance and reality,' runs the festival's synopsis. 'Confronting the moral complexities of his work, he rediscovers purpose, belonging, and the quiet beauty of human connection.' 'While it's inspired by a real, and sometimes unusual, business in Japan, it's ultimately about people longing for connection, and discovering the meaning of true friendship in modern Tokyo,' says Hikari. The gala takes place at London's Royal Festival Hall, with simultaneous screenings at cinemas across the UK. The 69th BFI London Film Festival runs from October 8-19. Tickets will be on sale to the general public from September 16 via the official LFF site. . .
UPI
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- UPI
'Rental Family' to screen at BFI London Film Festival gala
Aug. 13 (UPI) -- Rental Family, written and directed by Hikari and starring Brendan Fraser and Takehiro Hira, will screen at the 69th annual London Film Festival gala Oct. 16. The event at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall will mark the movie's London premiere, with Hikari (37 Seconds, Beef) and Fraser (The Whale) expected to attend. In Rental Family, Fraser portrays an actor who reluctantly accepts a role from an agency that rents out family members to people living in the Tokyo area. "As he immerses himself in his clients' worlds, he begins to form genuine bonds that blur the lines between performance and reality," an official synopsis reads. "Confronting the moral complexities of his work, he rediscovers purpose, belonging and the quiet beauty of human connection." Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Mahina Gorman and Akira Emoto also star in the film. A preview shows Fraser's character agreeing to portray a father figure in a family. When his so-called daughter meets him, she declares "I hate you!" The film is set for a November release in the United States and in January 2026 in Britain. "I feel so humbled and honored to return to the 2025 BFI London Film Festival with my second feature..." said Hikari in a statement. "While it's inspired by a real, and sometimes unusual, business in Japan, it's ultimately about people longing for connection and discovering the meaning of true friendship in modern Tokyo." Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery will open this year's BFI London Film Festival, which runs Oct. 8 to 19. Both Wake Up Dead Man and Rental Family will also screen at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
Japan Today
07-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
How true to life is Brendon Fraser's movie about Japanese rental families?
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24 In the decade-plus that SoraNews24 has been around, we've never once mentioned Brendan Fraser. This isn't because of any long-standing beef between us, but simply a result of the Academy Award-winning actor not having any major connections to Japan-related happenings during that interval. So to all our loyal readers who also happen to be fans of Mr Fraser, we apologize for the wait, which is now over thanks to the release of the trailer for "Rental Family." An upcoming release from Los Angeles-based Searchlight Pictures, "Rental Family" stars Fraser as a foreigner living in Japan, eking out a living acting in commercials. When that line of income starts to dry up, he finds a job with a 'rental family' agency, where customers pay to have someone play the role of a family member or friend. This isn't such a far-fetched premise. There's an entire ecosystem within the Japanese show business industry of foreign resident actors who specialize in bit roles in commercials, movies, TV dramas, and historical reenactment programs that need non-Japanese on-screen cast members (the live-action adaptation of manga "Thermae Romae," for example. has a scene set in an ancient Roman bathhouse with dozens of non-Japanese extras). The size of these parts, though, means that the actors aren't making A-lister money, so Fraser's character needing to take on an unorthodox job to make ends meet is pretty plausible. Likewise, Japan, really does have rental family agencies. They first started attracting significant attention in the early 2010s, and we've even tried their services out for ourselves, such as when our reporters rented a middle-aged man or sister (two sisters, actually). That said, judging from the trailer, it's debatable whether "Rental Family," directed by professionally mononymous Hikari, who was born in Japan and moved to the U.S. after high school, is attempting to accurately depict the status of rental family agencies in contemporary Japanese society, or whether its main goal is to tell a dramatic and emotional story with Fraser's character's job as its framing device. For example. a major plotline seems to involve a Japanese woman hiring Fraser's character to pretend to be the father of her daughter, who appears to be of mixed Japanese/Caucasian ancestry. 'This girl needs a father,' Fraser's boss tells him, and when he introduces himself to the child as such, in a public place, she shouts 'I hate you!' and storms off. 'She hates me,' Fraser laments to his boss, who replies 'That's what being a parent is.' Now, it's definitely true that most countries don't have rental family services, and the obvious reason is that the concept would be seen as just too weird. But while the idea isn't too weird for Japanese society as a whole, renting a family member is still considered unusual by most Japanese people. There's no real pushback against it, since it's seen as quirky but harmless fun for those who're intrigued by the proposition, and you could argue Japan is already somewhat softened regarding paid quasi-social relationships, what with hostess/host bars having been a thing for so long. However, hiring a stranger to pretend to be your child's father, especially as an attempt to address clearly severe psychological issues stemming from the parent's absence, is something that most Japanese people would say is a cruel disservice to the child, and not the sort of benefit that rental family agencies promote themselves as providing. Yes, you can rent a 'dad' in Japan, as Conan O'Brien famously did during his time in the country, but again, the service is targeted at adults wanting a fatherly figure for role play, not as a way to address the emotional trauma of a minor. Similarly, Japan's 'rental grandma' service is more about the sage wisdom, traditional skills, and calming presence that a woman of advanced age can provide, not necessarily acting as a substitute for an actual familial connection. So what about the two scenes where Fraser appears to have been hired to play the role of a groom at a wedding, one a Western-style ceremony and one a traditional Japanese one? Surely that's got to be crossing some sort of marriage-fraud line, right? Except, no, those are actually possible scenarios, though maybe not the most plausible. That's because in Japan, wedding ceremonies, whether performed at a church or temple, aren't legally binding. The only way to make your marriage official in the eyes of the law is to submit your marriage registration paperwork to your local city hall or ward office. So as long as the chapel or temple is OK with it, you could, in theory, hold a wedding ceremony, and a reception too, as a purely for-fun thing, perhaps if circumstances mean you're unlikely to ever get legally married to an actual life partner. Sure, it'd involve considerable expense, and there's no guarantee that all of your friends and family members would be onboard and happy to attend, but there's no legal barrier to doing it if you want to have the wedding experience without actually getting married. Oh, and you also have to give "Rental Family" credit for making sure to pick a suitably niche console to be the system of choice of the lonely man who hires Fraser to pretend to be his buddy. ▼ Your true friends are the ones who'll still hang out and play Dreamcast games with you in 2025 (but they'd be even better friends if they helped keep any snacks off of the disc drive cover). The trailer also includes a few shots of the Shibuya Scramble intersection, but I'm pretty sure the U.N. recently passed a resolution mandating the landmark be shown at least once in any foreign-produced movie with scenes set in Tokyo. The more aggravating thing is when the preview has someone saying, ostensibly to Fraser, 'You could live in this country for a hundred years, and there will still be things you won't understand.' Yeah, Japanese culture has its initially confusing quirks, just like any country's culture does, but playing up the inscrutability of the Japanese psyche is a pretty tired cliche, especially considering how many of Japan's real-world foreign residents effectively adapt to the local social norms way before they hit the century mark of living here, and even more especially when the line is paired with visuals showing people waiting at a train crossing, which doesn't exactly make one say 'Ah, Japan…so mysterious!' ▼ Granted, the barriers do tend to go down earlier in Japan than in some other countries, but 'Wait here so you don't get hit by a train' isn't so hard for non-Japanese people to wrap their heads around. So you could say that it's kind of a mixed bag in terms of how much of a window into modern Japanese life "Rental Family" is going to be, but that might not really be its intention anyway. Fraser's character himself even says 'You know, sometimes it's OK to pretend' as the trailer wraps up, so 100-percent real-world accuracy probably isn't the goal, and if nothing else it looks like it's going to be a story that's both introspective and encouraging of empathy, neither of which are bad emotional spaces for a movie to take its audience. "Rental Family" opens in theaters in North America on November 21. Source, images: YouTube/SearchlightPictures Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- We tried Tokyo's 'rent a middle-aged Japanese man' service, and it was awesome! -- Conan O'Brien in Japan episode features Toto toilets, Harajuku, a rented family and Conan Town -- Rental grandma service growing in Japan, can help cook or break up with boyfriends External Link © SoraNews24
Canada News.Net
07-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Canada News.Net
'Rental Family' trailer out: Brendan Fraser rediscovers himself hired as relative for Japanese agency clients
Washington DC [US], August 7 (ANI): Oscar-winning actor Brendan Fraser, known for his performance in 'The Whale', will next be seen in the comedy-drama movie 'Rental Family'. The makers have finally released the trailer of the film to offer a glimpse into the life of an actor who rediscovers himself while working for a Japanese agency. The movie is co-written and directed by Hikari. Along with Fraser, the movie also stars Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Gorman and Akira Emoto in prominent roles. According to the press note shared by the makers, the film follows an American actor (Brendan Fraser) who struggles to find purpose until he lands an unusual gig: working for a Japanese 'rental family' agency, playing stand-in roles for strangers. As he immerses himself in his clients' worlds, he begins to form genuine bonds that blur the lines between performance and reality. Confronting the moral complexities of his work, he rediscovers purpose, belonging, and the quiet beauty of human connection, as per the press note of the film. In the film's one-minute and thirty-second teaser, Fraser is shown battling in contemporary Tokyo, where he is asked to sell 'emotions' for twice the work and half the pay. As per the job, the actor is asked to play real-life roles for the agency's clients, which include posing as their best friend, sibling, boyfriend and others. Initially, Fraser struggles to adapt to this new 'rental' phenomenon, as in one of the scenes the actor faces the brunt of a child when he poses as her father in real life. Searchlight Pictures (the official distributor of the movie) shared the trailer of the movie on their official Instagram handle. With a screenplay by HIKARI and Stephen Blahut, the film is produced by Sight Unseen Pictures' Julia Lebedev and Eddie Vaisman, as well as Knockonwood's Shin Yamaguchi. 'Rental Family' will have its world premiere at the 50th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September 2025. (ANI)
Mint
07-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Rental Family trailer out: Brendan Fraser rediscovers himself hired as relative for Japanese agency clients
Washington DC [US], August 7 (ANI): Oscar-winning actor Brendan Fraser, known for his performance in 'The Whale', will next be seen in the comedy-drama movie 'Rental Family'. The makers have finally released the trailer of the film to offer a glimpse into the life of an actor who rediscovers himself while working for a Japanese agency. The movie is co-written and directed by Hikari. Along with Fraser, the movie also stars Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Gorman and Akira Emoto in prominent roles. According to the press note shared by the makers, the film follows an American actor (Brendan Fraser) who struggles to find purpose until he lands an unusual gig: working for a Japanese "rental family" agency, playing stand-in roles for strangers. As he immerses himself in his clients' worlds, he begins to form genuine bonds that blur the lines between performance and reality. Confronting the moral complexities of his work, he rediscovers purpose, belonging, and the quiet beauty of human connection, as per the press note of the film. In the film's one-minute and thirty-second teaser, Fraser is shown battling in contemporary Tokyo, where he is asked to sell "emotions" for twice the work and half the pay. As per the job, the actor is asked to play real-life roles for the agency's clients, which include posing as their best friend, sibling, boyfriend and others. Initially, Fraser struggles to adapt to this new "rental" phenomenon, as in one of the scenes the actor faces the brunt of a child when he poses as her father in real life. Searchlight Pictures (the official distributor of the movie) shared the trailer of the movie on their official Instagram handle. With a screenplay by HIKARI and Stephen Blahut, the film is produced by Sight Unseen Pictures' Julia Lebedev and Eddie Vaisman, as well as Knockonwood's Shin Yamaguchi. 'Rental Family' will have its world premiere at the 50th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September 2025. (ANI)
