Hiring strangers to serve as everything from funeral mourners to wedding guests is a real phenomenon in Japan, even if the overseas media use it to sell “weird Japan” stereotypes.
Director Hikari, who goes by one name professionally, doesn’t completely avoid such stereotyping in her heartwarming drama “Rental Family.” An education-obsessed mom hires a fake American father so her mixed-race daughter can pass an interview for a private elementary school. A bearded recluse engages the same American to play video games with him in his cave of an apartment. And ickiest of all, a salaryman type has the American guy’s Japanese boss stage a humiliation scenario that concludes with the salaryman groveling to cardboard-cutout authority figures.
How bizarre! But to the overseas audiences the film is targeting, how very Japanese.
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