Rental Family

★★★☆

Rental Family (2025)

Runtime: 109 minutes

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, some strong language, and suggestive material.

There's an extremely interesting phenomenon in Japan where rental family services are offered, providing clients with actors who portray friends, family members, coworkers for social events and companions for individuals. Mental health issues have always been stigmatised there, perceived as a lack of willpower, resilience and self-control. Due to deep-rooted cultural beliefs, there has been widespread underreporting of mental health struggles and low rates of people seeking professional help.

What if they're instead messing with people's lives, making the situation even more volatile and worse? How do we blur the line between what's real and fake? Hikari's (real name Mitsuyo Miyazaki) film, Rental Family, centers on a struggling American actor in Tokyo Phillip Vanderploeg (Brendan Fraser). Once recognised for a toothpaste commercial, he's struggling to survive and adapt to Japan's culture, working a multitude of odd jobs, until he gets a gig in a rental family agency, playing roles in the lives of strangers. Rental Family constructs two extreme scenarios which are staggering on first impression, and while initially aimless and scattered, it converges to become a tender and heartwarming meditation on human connection, far more restrained and profound than I would have expected it to be.

Phillip's agency also includes his boss Shinji (Takehiro Hira) and fellow colleague Aiko (Mari Yamamoto), who frequently express their dissatisfaction with Phillip becoming too attached to his clients and occasionally backing out from morally complex scenarios. He'll eventually convince them that their services, in an attempt to fill the void in their clients, may potentially exacerbate their vulnerabilities. He's handed two tasks: the first is pretending to the father of Mia Kawasaki (Shannon Gorman) to help her gain admission into a prestigious institution. The second is to pose as a journalist to a retired actor Kikuo Hasegawa (Akira Emoto), who's battling with dementia. Rental Family walks a tightrope between meaningful truths and emotional manipulation with its sometimes maudlin score, yet subtle performances and insightful questions prevent the entire project from sinking into sentimentality.

In this role, Fraser is evidently more muted than previous performances, most notably The Whale. He communicates thoughtful contemplation, sincerity and ethical dilemmas as his character wonders how rental services affect their clients' lives. Let's examine the two constructs. While connecting with Mia, he learns that her real father abandoned the family, so reconnecting with Mia is initially rough, followed with moments of bringing her to places like carnivals and museums, re-establishing a meaningful connection between a daughter and her estranged father. In this role, can you really play with human emotions? Mia has never met her father, so she believes Phillip's acting, and he in turn intends to continue conversing and interacting with her too.

Being a journalist to Kikuo carries a lighter burden, until he requests for Phillip to bring him to his hometown of Amakusa, something he objects at first but finally gives in. There, Kikuo unearths a box containing memories of his first love, a moving reminiscence of a life near the end of it, something he wanted to cling to before being consumed by a disease that would make him forget these memories. Phillip is subsequently tracked and accused of abduction, considering that Kikuo's daughter was against him travelling across the country, and there's naturally an argument in the company where this concept is interrogated, with Phillip positing that these services soullessly fill empty holes rather than forge genuine human connections.

Eventually, Mia discovers the ruse and something happens to Kikuo, extending the conflict even further. Which makes it surprising that Rental Family wraps up these moments of discomfort neatly in a conclusion that's rather abrupt. Shinji and Aiko change their minds quickly, while Phillip's lie and Mia's disappointment is quickly resolved in a short conversation. There's a version that digs deeper into these uncomfortable truths and critiques the stigmatisation of mental wellbeing in the country, which would have packed the landing with a greater punch. The film closes with him looking at a mirror, promising to always be true to himself. Perhaps we should be honest with ourselves and everyone around us too.