‘Rental Family’ Review: Brendan Fraser is a Conduit for Loneliness in Hikari’s Found in Translation [B+] TIFF
Of the many fascinating aspects of Japan as a nation and culture, one particular feature that stands out is its remarkable subculture of bizarre rental services. In Japan, you can rent almost anything you can think of, from renting a pet to renting a girlfriend/boyfriend to even renting a person’s lap for you to rest your head on. How such services can be successful may seem baffling, but it means one thing: there must actually be a demand.
This is what struggling actor Philip (Brendan Fraser) experiences firsthand, when he’s suddenly recruited to play a “sad American” at a funeral that turns out to be staged. He is then introduced to Rental Family, a company that hires actors to play stand-ins to help clients. As the owner of the company (Takehiro Hira) describes it, they “sell emotions.” This concept is perceived as immediately weird and potentially immoral for Philip, but having lived in Japan for seven years and his most successful work being a toothpaste commercial, he reluctantly takes the job.
Through Philip’s surrogate roles, director/co-writer Hikari explores not only the Japanese culture where she’s from, but she taps into a vulnerability often found in Eastern culture. This is explored through two main storylines in the film.
The first is a mother who is trying to help her daughter Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman) get into a prestigious school, whose application process requires a family unit of father and mother to undergo an interview process. But since the father figure has long disappeared from their lives, Philip must fill that role for Mia.
The second is the daughter of famous retired actor Kikuo (Akira Emoto), who is battling dementia, and so Philip must play an American writer to “interview” him about his work so he can remember and feel important again, all while receiving some company at home.
At first glance, Rental Family appears to be grouped with other dramas that release in fall festivals, designed to solely win awards with its generic sentimentality and surface-level script. Admittedly, I spent the first half of the runtime thinking about how I wanted the script to be sharper, as I wanted an examination in why these services can exist and what their moral implications are. Is sentimentality enough, I wondered.
By the second half of the film, it became clear that Hikari’s remarkable restraint in telling this story is an intentional choice. Whether it is through an elderly man who knows he doesn’t have much time left in this world or it’s through a little girl who doesn’t care about her path in education and just wants to have a father who spends time with her, Hikari is searching for people’s emotional needs and honoring them. This isn’t an interrogation or an explanation, but companionship.
Time plays a core part in Rental Family, as it’s very much rooted in Japanese and East Asian culture. Life is fleeting, and nature is divine. And as Philip spends more and more time with his clients, we come to understand who they are as people, the void that’s existent in their lives, and where that loneliness stems from. This results in Philip trying to go beyond what the Rental Family service offers, as he starts to care “too much” about Mia and Kikuo.
Hikari doesn’t shy away from some of the moral thorniness. How do we know that our actions will represent our intentions, when so much of what we feel is deeply internalized instead of being communicated out loud? How can we be so sure that what the client is asking for is actually what’s best for them?
That latter question goes to some darker territory in the film through the character of Aiko (Mari Yamamoto), Philip’s co-worker. Unlike Philip’s roles, she often gets paid to play “the other woman” in extramarital affairs, where she has to apologize and take all the blame. Yes, it’s an “apology service.” Even for the owner of the company, a late reveal certainly recontextualized everything we thought we knew about the man.
In a country where mental health is stigmatized and a pressure to maintain social harmony looms over everyone, it’s no wonder why subcultures are formed and under-the-radar services like rental families can exist. To an outsider’s perspective, it can seem like all of this is a social critique of Japanese society. I can’t say that Rental Family isn’t a critique, because Hikari does address some of the moral failings that can come from that mindset. That being said, the film remains empathetic and lovingly patient, as it is both a love letter to Japan as well as a warm embrace to anyone out there experiencing loneliness. After all, our time here is so temporary, and sometimes the one thing we need is to be reminded that we exist – the more I think about that, the more emotional I get. As Brendan Fraser said it best at the world premiere, “We need that human connection now more than ever.”
Grade: B+
This review is from the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival where Rental Family had its world premiere. Searchlight Pictures will release the film theatrically in the U.S. on November 21.
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