November 19, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Hikari
Some language in Japanese with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in Japan, primarily in the city of Tokyo, the dramatic film “Rental Family” features a predominantly Japanese cast of characters (with a few white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: An American bachelor, who is living in Tokyo, struggles to find work as an actor, until he becomes a reluctant employee of a small “rental family” company that offers services where employees pretend to clients’ family members or companions, for various reasons.
Culture Audience: “Rental Family” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and dramas about unexpected human connections.
Emotionally moving but utterly predictable, “Rental Family” is elevated by talented performances. This drama struggles with balancing two separate storylines, but the film has a lot to say about the importance of genuine human connections. Some viewers might be surprised to know that the rental family business depicted in the movie is legal and acceptable in Japan and some other countries.
Directed by Hikari (who co-wrote the “Rental Family” screenplay with Stephen Blahut), “Rental Family” had its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie has since made the rounds at several other festivals in 2025, including the Tokyo International Film Festival, the BFI London Film Festival and AFI Fest. “Rental Family” takes place primarily in Tokyo, where the movie was filmed on location.
“Rental Family” begins by showing an American actor in his 50s named Phillip Vandarpleog (played by Brendan Fraser), a lonely and empathetic bachelor who lives in Tokyo, as he rushes to an audition. Phillip arrives at the audition with a lot of enthusiasm and hope, which is later deflated when he finds out that the job is not for a significant role but it’s to dress up as a tree as a background actor. Phillip (who is fluent in Japanese) moved to Tokyo seven years ago, when he became semi-famous for starring in a Japanese commercial for toothpaste. But lately, he’s had a hard time finding work as an actor.
It can be presumed that Phillip stayed in Tokyo because he likes living there. But throughout the movie, it becomes obvious that Phillip moved to Japan because he has completely cut himself off from the people he knew in the United States. Later in the movie, Phillip drops a hint that he is estranged from his biological family in America, when he tells someone that when his father died years ago, Phillip took a plane flight to go to his father’s funeral, but Phillip skipped the funeral and stayed at the airport instead.
Phillip also mentions later in the movie that his mother (who is now deceased) raised Phillip because Phillip’s father “wasn’t really around” to raise Phillip. In another scene, Phillip says that his mother was the only person in Phillip’s life who never judged Phillip. Don’t expect a complete explanation for why Phillip doesn’t keep in touch with people he knew in his previous life because the movie never explains why.
Phillip, who has no children, lives alone in a high-rise apartment, where he can see into the other apartments nearby if the residents leave their windows exposed. Phillip is not a voyeur, but he likes to observe how other people live. He sometimes looks wistfully at people who have families or partners, although Phillip doesn’t have a burning desire to live with anyone or start his own family. He seems to be someone who’s been a loner for a very long time and is accustomed to this lifestyle.
Phillip’s agent Sonia (voiced by Helen Sadler) is a Brit who communicates with him mainly by phone. One day, Sonia tells him about a role he can audition for, where the role is described as “sad American.” Sonia tells Phillip where to go for this audition. Phillip soon finds out that this isn’t a regular acting job.
Phillip finds out the true nature of this job when he goes to the funeral and discovers it’s not an audition but is actually an elaborately staged funeral. Someone named Yu-kun Daitoh (played by Shôhei Uno), the person in the coffin, has arranged to stage his own funeral so he can hear nice things that people would say about him if he actually died. Phillip, who is completely shocked.
At the end of the funeral, Phillip sees Mr. Daitoh and Mr. Daitoh’s parents (played by Sonoe Mizoguchi and Keiji Yamashita) thank the middle-aged man who played the role of funeral director for staging this fake funeral. The parents explain that Mr. Daitoh was depressed, and they arranged the funeral to make him feel appreciated. Mr. Daitoh says, “I finally feel like I deserve to exist.”
Phillip asks the “funeral director” what type of business he’s operating. The man gives him a business card, which shows that his name is Shinji Tada (played by Takehiro Hira), the owner of company called Rental Family. Shinji tells Phillip to call if he’s interested in finding out more about this work and possibly working for Rental Family for more acting assignments. Shinji says the job requires “specialized performances.”
Rental Family is a business whose clients rent actors and actresses to pretend to be whomever the client wants the hired person to be for non-sexual reasons. It’s not a prostitution business. Most of the clients want the hired people to pretend to be a family member, friend or romantic partner. Because sexual activity is not supposed to be involved in the transactions, this type of business is legal in Japan and in other countries.
Whether or not it’s an ethical business is open to debate. Throughout the story, Phillip has mixed feelings about the ethics of this business and how much he thinks he can cross the line from pretending to care to actually caring about the people whom he is hired to deceive. Out of curiosity, Phillip goes to the Rental Family office that hired him for the funeral job. That’s when Shinji tells Phillip more details about the Rental Family business.
During this office visit, Phillip overhears phone calls where potential customers are told how much it costs to rent the types of people they want to rent. For example, Shinji takes a phone call from a potential customer who wants to “rent” a teenage daughter. Shinji quotes a price of ¥18,000 for the first two hours of this rental.
Phillip is visibly uncomfortable at how people’s relationships are being fabricated and discussed as monetary transactions. He politely declines Shinji’s offer to get more work from Rental Family because Phillip says this type of work isn’t for him. However, there would be no “Rental Family” movie if Phillip didn’t change his mind.
Shinji appeals to Phillip’s ego and says, “I loved your toothpaste commercial.” Shinji also explains the business model of Rental Family: “We sell emotion. We play roles in the client’s life.” Phillip changes his mind, partly because he needs the money and partly because he’s curious about this new type of acting experience. He still has some doubts, but he decides he can always say no to a Rental Family assignment that he doesn’t want to do.
In addition to Shinji, the Rental Family company has two other full-time employees, who are both in their late 20s or early 30s: Aiko Nakajima (played by Mari Yamamoto) is cynical and a bit stand-offish. Kota Nakano (played by Bun Kimura) is friendly and approachable. Aiko has been tasked with training Phillip, but she seems wary and skeptical that Phillip will be good at this job.
Phillip’s next Rental Family acting assignment is to pretend to marry a woman in her 30s named Yoshie Ikeda (played by Misato Morita) because Yoshie’s conservative parents Hideo Ikeda (played by Daikichi Sugawara) and Keiko Ikeda (played by Hideko Hara) are pressuring Yoshie to get married. Phillip’s fake identity for this acting assignment is to be an affluent Canadian businessman named Brian Callahan, who is supposed to be Yoshie’s “fiancé.” Yoshie has told her parents that after the wedding, she and her “husband” will be moving permanently to Canada.
Phillip meets Yoshie only a day or two before the fake wedding. Yoshie privately explains to Phillip that her parents don’t care that they didn’t meet her “fiancé” sooner because her parents only care that she’s getting married to someone who can provide a comfortable financial lifestyle. Yoshie also says that her parents don’t mind that there’s a large age gap between Yoshie and “Brian,” or that Yoshie plans to move to a country that’s far away from Japan.
On the day of the fake wedding, which is being held at a hotel, Phillip gets so nervous and uneasy about the part he would play in this deception, he hides in a hotel bathroom. Aiko finds him and has to convince Phillip to go through with the assignment by telling Phillip that he will ruin Yoshie’s life if he doesn’t do this assignment. The fake wedding happens without any problems or complications. Yoshie’s parents seem to be very pleased with “Brian” and are very welcoming to him.
After the fake wedding, Yoshie reveals to Phillip the real reason why she wanted to pretend to get married to a man: Yoshie is in a secret relationship with a woman named Jun (played by Nanami Kawakami), who is the person whom Yoshie really wants to marry. Same-sex marriage is not legal in Japan, and Yoshie’s parents would disown her if they knew she’s queer or a lesbian, which is why Yoshie and Jun plan to move to Canada (where same-sex marriage is legal) and marry in Canada. Phillip sees how happy Yoshie and Jun are together, which convinces him he made the right decision to do this Rental Family assignment.
Phillip has his own personal experience with paying for companionship. He’s a regular client of a sex worker named Lola (played by Tamae Ando), whom he confides in about his mixed feelings about his Rental Family work. Lola tells him that just as she provides a specific type of companionship that helps people, Phillip can provide a different type of helpful companionship with his Rental Family work. It makes him feel even better about his decision to continue to get work from Rental Family.
The rest of the movie then shows how Phillip tries to juggle two assignments at the same time, as he gets very emotionally involved with the people whom he was hired to comfort. The movie does a fairly good job of portraying Phillip doing these simultaneous assignments. However, there are some flaws to this narrative because it doesn’t flow as well as it should.
First, Phillip is hired by a status-conscious single mother named Hitomi Kawasaki (played by Shino Shinozaki) to pretend to be the American father of Hitomi’s intelligent and artistic daughter Mia Kawasaki (played by Shannon Mahina Gorman, also known as Shannon Gorman), who’s about 7 or 8 years old, so that Mia can be enrolled in an elite private school that has a top-tier art program. Phillip’s fake identity for this Rental Family assignment is to be a computer engineer named Kevin, who is from Minnesota. The school requires in-person interviews with the parents of student applicants. Hitomi thinks Mia will have a much better chance of being accepted into the school if the school thinks that Hitomi is married to Mia’s father.
Mia has never met her biological father and has never been told who he is, but she has been told that her father abandoned Mia and Hitomi. As part of the charade, Hitomi introduces Mia to “Kevin” as Mia’s long-lost absentee father, who now wants to be a part of Mia’s life. Phillip has to lie and tell Mia that he’s sorry he spent time away from her. Phillip also tells Mia that he wants to make up for lost time by getting to know Mia. It’s part of Hitomi’s plan to make Mia familiar enough with “Kevin” so the three of them can look like a believable family.
Hitomi plans to hire Phillip for this assignment until she finds out whether or not Mia got accepted into the school. Mia has to be interviewed separately by school officials as part of the application process. Hitomi doesn’t think Mia would be able to convincingly lie about “Kevin” being her father, which is why Hitomi decided that Mia has to be told the lie that “Kevin” is her biological father. It’s implied that if anyone asks why “Kevin” was away for long periods of time, Hitomi plans to lie and say it’s because Kevin has to do a lot of work outside of Japan.
At the same time he’s masquerading as Mia’s biological father, Phillip has a separate Rental Family assignment that is less complicated, but he still gets emotionally attached to the person he’s deceiving. A middle-aged woman named Masami Hasegawa (played by Sei Matobu) hires Phillip to pretend to be an American journalist named John Conway from Vivid Frame magazine. Masami wants “John” to interview her elderly father Kikuo Hasegawa (played by Akira Emoto), who is a retired famous actor, for a “tribute article” that Vivid Frame is doing about Kikuo. Kikuo now has dementia. Masami has staged this tribute interview so that Kikuo can relive happy memories and feel better about himself.
It should come as no surprise that Mia is initially hostile to “Kevin,” but she eventually starts to warm up to him as they spend time together. Phillip starts to develop real “father figure” feelings for Mia, who makes him promise in front of Hitomi that he won’t leave them again. This promise will come back to haunt Phillip because he knows that this acting assignment is supposed to be temporary. As for Kikuo, Phillip also develops an emotional bond with him and takes a risk with Kikuo that won’t be revealed in this review, but this risk is something that can get Phillip into big trouble.
“Rental Family” has some charming performances and heartfelt moments throughout the film, thanks to the appealing acting of the movie’s principal cast members. The movie also shows the dark side of the Rental Family business. For example, Aiko is frequently hired by adulterous husbands who want to introduce her as their mistress to their suspicious wives, who then lash out at Aiko when she makes an apology to the wives and promises that the affair is over. In reality, the husbands are just using Aiko as a decoy so the husbands can keep their real mistresses as secrets. Shinji’s personal life is also shown to be affected by what he does as the owner of Rental Family.
“Rental Family” will make viewers think about how much a business like Rental Family can really help or hurt people by setting up these false relationships and staged scenarios. However, this movie about faking identities has a little bit of phoniness of its own. In this day and age of Internet searches and social media, it seems a little hard to believe that many of these charades aren’t easily discovered to be scams.
“Rental Family” doesn’t convincingly explain why some of the Rental Family jobs are not detected as frauds by people who can do Internet searches. This lack of detail doesn’t ruin “Rental Family,” but there’s a glossy sheen to the story that telegraphs how the movie ultimately ends. Where “Rental Family” shines the most is in Phillip’s meaningful interactions and with how people discover things about themselves when they experience the pros and cons of a Rental Family job.
Searchlight Pictures will release “Rental Family” in U.S. cinemas on November 21, 2025.
