Tokyo-set comedy-drama Rental Family was an audience feelgood favourite on the film festival circuit, and included in the National Board of Review’s list of the year’s top 10 films. It centres on the Japanese business of rental families, where people hire actors to pose as a character in their life (this was also the subject of a Werner Herzog 2019 documentary, Family Romance LLC).
It is the second feature from director Hikari (her first was 37 Seconds), who spent years developing the script with her co-writer Stephen Blahut (the DP on 37 Seconds). The pair came up with the idea for the film after Blahut himself was offered a rental family gig. Hitari also drew on her own experience living abroad as a foreign high school exchange student in Utah, which she is now looking to turn into a TV series.
The writers were not set on the protagonist, lonely expat rental family actor Philip, being an American – he just needed to be non-Japanese, to deliver the film’s core message that “no matter what nationality we are, what we look like, we can be family and we can create love, we can create friendship”.
Philip is charmingly played by Brendan Fraser, cast for the “kind soul” that shone through his Oscar-winning performance in The Whale – an essential ingredient in a film that, while often very funny, is essentially about the power of human kindness and connection. Fraser is supported by an excellent ensemble cast including prominent Japanese actors Akira Emoto (a Japanese Academy Award winner, who plays retired actor Kikuo Hasegawa) and Takehiro Hira (star of BBC crime drama Giri/Haji, as the owner of the rental family agency).
“[A] beautiful and contemplative film, with lovely messaging and a couple of sly twists. I’m not ready to call it the best film of 2025, but it might just be my favourite.” Richard Roeper, RogerEbert.com
“[H]arks back to those quirky Japanese comedy dramas from the 1980s and 1990s … it wears its heart on its sleeve and is a bit too sentimental, but it is sweet and pleasing.” G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle
