December Movies Part 1: Rental Family & Hamnet

There are a lot of movies to watch this month so I'm slowly making my way through them all. Here are my reviews of a technically perfect movie that seems destined for Oscars, and a shaggier but extremely compelling movie that won me over. My reactions to these movies surprised me, maybe they will surprise you too!

Rental Family: Directed by Hikari, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Stephen Blahut, this is a movie about a struggling American actor named Phillip (Brendan Fraser), who has been living in Japan for seven years after he initially had success with a commercial, but now can never seem to get good work. When he meets Shinji (Takehiro Hira), the owner of a rental family agency, he overcomes his initial reservations and agrees to be a part of this company that offers up a uniquely Japanese service - actors for hire who can help people by pretending to be their family members or acquaintances, so they can live out some sort of make-believe scenario that better helps them cope with their life or get out of a sticky situation with a relative. Because there is so much stigma around mental health in Japan, this is what people usually resort to instead of going to a therapist to work through their problems.

I was initially worried that this movie was going down a white savior route. Phillip is constantly troubled by his conscience and wondering why these Japanese people keep bending themselves out of shape to please their families instead of acting on their own desires. But as the movie progresses, there is a great deal of back-and-forth between him and Aiko (Mari Yamamoto), his colleague who is passionate about this job and the good it can do, but who also starts to realize that maybe some of the services they offer are subject to more scrutiny. The very first job that Phillip takes on is so clearly helpful to his client, but the next two are much more morally ambiguous. Wrestling with that ambiguity over the course of this film makes it a truly engaging and thought-provoking experience.

Overall, I was delighted by this movie. There were moments when it got a bit maudlin, but I found myself moved and charmed and thoroughly swept away by all the performances, especially Fraser's quiet but powerful work, where he lets his eyes do most of the talking. It's also simply wonderful to be treated to an original story with fresh perspectives we don't ordinarily get to see in Hollywood movies. More please!

Hamnet: Directed by Chloe Zhao, who adapted the screenplay with Maggie O'Farrell (who wrote the 2020 novel), this is a story set in Elizabethan England that portrays William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) meeting and falling in love with his wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley), starting a family, and then, grief-stricken from losing his son, Hamnet, eventually writing his tragic masterpiece, Hamlet.

This movie is a technical masterpiece. The production design by Fiona Crombie is unparalleled, capturing Shakespeare's England in vivid and striking detail alongside Malgosia Turzanska's beautiful costumes, while Zhao's direction manages to be both sweeping and intimate, full of gorgeous, dappled shots of nature, and then long close-up shots of her actors, who are delivering performances of a lifetime. Unsurprisingly, Mescal and Buckley are brilliant in this film, particularly Buckley who lets that marvelously mobile face of hers take us on an emotional rollercoaster. But even the child actors are superb, especially Jacobi Jupe as the young Hamnet, who has to convey rather deep and serious emotion over the course of this film. In a lovely bit of casting, his older brother, Noah Jupe, plays the character of Hamlet in the performance of the play that takes up the finale of the movie.

All that being said, this movie left me cold. It feels churlish to say so, but it was too perfect and polished. I loved the novel, but that meant I knew the story already, and again, while the movie is a perfect adaptation, nothing felt original or particularly fresh about it. There also was a rather unfortunate choice during the most powerful scene that completely took me out of the movie. There is a music cue that is not original - it's a beautiful piece of music that I recognized from another movie, and it has recently been deployed in other films and TV shows anytime the creators really want to tug at your heartstrings. That lack of originality, while still using a technically perfect piece of music for the scene, was the final straw for me. This is a great movie, and I don't begrudge it any awards, especially for Best Production Design or Best Actress, but I left the theater wishing it had touched my heart more.