As I sat in my favorite movie palace, the Music Box Theatre, waiting for my wife—Cinema Femme founder Rebecca Martin—to arrive for that evening’s eagerly awaited Chicago International Film Festival screening of Hikari’s “Rental Family,” I overheard the woman next to me mention her plans to see my all-time favorite film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” at the venue around Christmastime. Naturally, I began a conversation with her, and ended up befriending her whole family, which coincidentally included the renowned wildlife photographer Todd Gustafson. He shared with me incredible stories of his late friend, Jane Goodall, who had visited the nearby Lincoln Park Zoo just weeks prior to her passing at the beginning of October. For those minutes prior to the film beginning, we had all become a family of sorts. Little did we know that we were about to see a picture about the serendipity and healing power of human connection, even when it is purchased.
“Rental Family” is the sort of crowd-pleasing, seriocomic slice of life that I imagine would’ve earned John Candy an Oscar nomination had he been able to further explore his gifts as an actor. The role I can clearly picture the late actor inhabiting is played by Brendan Fraser, who may have recently won an Oscar for his shattering performance in “The Whale,” yet will likely surprise viewers here with his boundless warmth and arresting vulnerability. His character, Phillip, is a struggling actor seeking a steady gig in Tokyo who finds it in the unlikeliest of places, the titular rental family business. He’s assigned to play an assortment of people in the everyday lives of strangers, oftentimes to fulfill an emotional need. Yet when he starts feeling a tangible paternal connection with the little girl, Mia (Shannon Gorman), whom he’s pretending to father, Phillip starts to question the lies inherent to his form of employment.
Though Rebecca and I both loved the film, she was originally scheduled to interview Hikari the following morning for Cinema Femme. The director’s previous feature—her emotional powerhouse of a debut, “37 Seconds,” about a girl with cerebral palsy yearning to live independently from her mother—was Rebecca’s very favorite film of 2020. Alas, work commitments at her day job resulted in me having to stand in for her last second, though I made sure to incorporate as many of her questions in the Q&A below as my own. Hikari proved to be every bit the joyous life force she had been onstage the previous evening, and when we took a picture at the end of our conversation, we spontaneously struck Rebecca’s signature pose by flashing peace signs.
Your two features are among Rebecca and my favorites that we’ve seen in recent years. One of Rebecca’s other favorite movies is “Lost in Translation” which, like your new film, is a fish out of water story about a white actor in Tokyo. When Rebecca learned that you had moved from Japan to the United States in your teens, she felt that “Rental Family,” in a way, was an interesting inverse of your story. What made you want to tackle that concept in this way?
That’s a great question. Thanks Rebecca! When I first came to America, being the only Japanese exchange student in the room, it was challenging at first, obviously. You don’t speak the language, and you’re just kind of nervous. But at the same time, there were people—including my host family—who wanted to befriend me, and they are to this day still my best friends. They really found me to be an interesting person, even though I didn’t speak the language. They were teaching me everything about life, and I was so appreciative of that. The connections that I was able to make during that time in my life were what I wanted to put into this movie. The profound memory of being alone, but also creating a found family on my own has been such a valuable experience. For the film, it felt natural for me to connect these ideas with the rental family business.
You said a wonderful thing at last night’s Q&A that put the rental family concept in perspective for me, in that it serves a similar function to therapists in the U.S. Since therapy is difficult to come by in Japan, this business provides a vital service, and is a consensual agreement between adults.
Exactly. Have you been to Tokyo?
No—I’d love to!
You have to go! It’s such a great place. There is, however, a façade that people there feel like they have to perform. There’s some beauty in it, but at the same time, people are struggling and need a place where they can release their stress. The rental family business is just one example of that. There are hostess clubs where people go to have a drink and just express whatever happened that day. The hostesses are there to listen to them, and those places became so popular. But they were really only for businessmen, so now there’s a host club for women.
The problem with those clubs is you have to spend so much money there, and people end up with a bill way beyond what they can pay. When you place an order with a rental family business, you know how much you’re paying for, and there’s a beginning and end to the service. It’s not like you’re drinking alcohol, and the next thing you know, you’re paying a $3,000 tip. You are arranging all the details so that you’ll know exactly what to expect. You can basically build the two hours, or however long you have the service for, exactly as you want it. Why not?
Like last night’s moderator Mimi Plauché noted, there are parallels between this service and cinema in how they provide a safe space for people to deal with things that are too difficult to approach in real life. One of your filmmaking heroes, Steven Spielberg, has such a gift for making audiences weep, and you have that exact same gift. You both allow the faces of the actors to anchor the scene, such as when Elliott says goodbye to E.T., or when Phillip must bid farewell to the girl he has grown to love like a daughter.
As a filmmaker, I angle the camera from a perspective similar to the one you would have if you were having the conversation being had by the characters onscreen. The position of the camera is something I always pay attention to. I don’t want to force anything. For me, movies are all about emotion. That’s how we are able to feel what the characters are feeling. Of course, there are plot points, and you have to go through A to B to C to D. But what keeps you emotionally connected are the performances that the actors are giving. So all I do is give direction to the actors about what I’m looking for in the scene. We rehearse a couple of times before going on set. Once we get there, I let them do whatever they want for the first take. If I feel like it needs an adjustment—which it does, in most cases, because I’m so particular [laughs]—I will give it to them before we do the next take.
With Brandon, everything was right there in his face. I didn’t have to ask too much of him, and he didn’t need to do too much. His face will just twitch, and all the emotion will be there. Steven Yeun was exactly the same when I directed him in “Beef.” He is so natural that he doesn’t have to do anything. All he has to do is smile, for example, and you know exactly how his character is feeling. It’s my job in the editing room to put all those pieces of a performance together, because normally, I won’t just use one take. I’ll use one thing from take one and then the end of take three. And I’ll tell you, Matt, this movie took a long time to edit, and I enjoy editing so much. We had the really extreme comedy version of certain scenes, and then turned them down so that they became very organic. I always like to try different approaches to see what happens, so I tried everything.
That’s what I appreciate about your cinema is how there’s such a range in the tones from high comedy to tender drama, and they never conflict with one another. Is there a difference in how you go about directing younger actors like Mei Kayama in “37 Seconds” and Shannon Gorman in “Rental Family”? They are both extraordinary.
You make me so happy! I’m going to put you in my pocket and carry you around so that you’ll make me feel confident! [laughs] Every actor is different, though my approach in directing them remains the same. I let them do their work and then make little adjustments. Because this was Shannon’s first time acting in a film, she needed to be pushed in order to play someone so different from herself. I never asked her to play a scene in a certain way. I always started by asking her things like, “How are you feeling? Do you think your character would feel that same way in this scene?” We’d talk through it together, and she’d say, “No, I think she’d be mad.” Then I’d say, “Alright, let’s go feel mad a little bit. Can we do that?” When she’s not giving me enough anger, I’ll start literally screaming at her, but not in a mean way. I’ll yell, “Come on, you can do it! You’re mad at him,” until she’ll deliver her lines with the necessary emotion during a take.
Shannon is such a quiet girl and never had to scream before in her life. The same was true of Mei in “37 Seconds.” For a scene with her mom, she had to yell, and in all her 23 years, had never yelled in her life. So in both cases, I had to push the actors, and they each did an incredible job. They are so pure because they had never acted in a film before. Sometimes I feel bad when I have to push actors like that. Actually, with Akira Emoto, who plays the filmmaker for whom Phillip poses as a journalist, we did a lot of improvisation because he already had the foundation of experience. I just wanted to see what else he could do, so I kept pushing him to play, and he said it was exhausting. [laughs] But he loved it.
The safe environment that you create for your actors, as the director, must be crucial in how you elicit performances of such emotional vulnerability.
Yeah, exactly. Actors are ready to take on anything. There are two things that take me out of a movie or TV show that I’m watching. One is when the placement of the camera or camera movements draw attention to themselves, and the other is when I feel an actor is pushing too much. Great actors know how to avoid doing that, obviously. For me, directing actors just comes organically. Sometimes all I have to do is give one little adjustment to the actors, and they’ll know what to do in the next take. I like to just let things play, and am fond of long takes in general. I just keep rolling and will know when things start to feel good. Sometimes after I say “cut,” I think, ‘I should’ve just waited for five more seconds.’
There is so much oppression people are facing right now, both in America and around the world. You spoke so beautifully last night about your belief, which my wife and I share, that cinema can bring people together by illuminating what connects them, which is a direct rebuke to the leaders seeking to divide us.
Absolutely. I’m a firm believer in that. You and I and Rebecca are fortunate because we are passionate about what we do. We were able to listen to our gut and have followed it so that we can do what we love to do, whether it’s filmmaking or journalism. That’s why I like the reflection of the divine being that is represented at the end of the film. When you’re able to listen to yourself and follow your guidance, wherever it will take you will be the right answer. And once you get there, you’re going to start loving yourself even more. I honestly believe that. You can’t love somebody else when you don’t love yourself. Conveying this to people is the reason why I made this movie.
I want people to know that they’re not alone. They are surrounded by so many other people who feel the same way. We just have to be open-minded about connecting with one another little by little, step by step. Some viewers might not get what I’m trying to say, and that’s fine. But the viewers who do get it may find themselves starting to feel more connected with each other. To the Japanese people, Phillip is seen as a “token white guy” and a gaijin—a foreigner—but after people in Japan see the film, they’ll hopefully be kinder to foreigners. I hope that applies to all audiences in every corner of the world who see this film. You never know what’s happening in another person’s mind, so I wanted to create a film that could hopefully help people start to understand and support each other. That really is the way that we can make this world a better place.
At some point, the people who seek to oppress us will be unable to control us. Who knows how long it’s going to take? But eventually, we’re going to say, “Enough is enough. We’re not going to war with each other anymore.” I swear that time is going to come, as long as they don’t fuck up the earth. So let’s get to work!
“Rental Family” opens in U.S. theaters on Friday, November 21st.
