Rental Family

Released 2025. Director: Hikari

RENTAL FAMILY BEARS REMARKABLE SIMILARITIES with Family Romance, LLC, a documentary/feature film hybrid from Werner Herzog in 2019. Both films deal with the phenomenon of renting “actors” to fulfil specific social roles, a practice I believe is unique to Japan. For example, you can hire a plus-one to bring to a party or dinner invitation, a boyfriend or girlfriend for platonic company, or other situations where you need a stand-in, even surrogate for husband or wife, father or mother, with the “actors” given scripts and background notes to portray their characters with factual accuracy.

In Family Romance, LLC we follow the proprietor of one such service as he enacts roles for his clients. In Rental Family we follow Brendan Fraser's character as he navigates this junction that fuses real-life and make-believe and explores the absolutely bizarre dimensions of customer service.

Fraser's character is Phillip Vanderploeg, an American in Tokyo struggling to find work as an actor. He stumbles into this masquerade business and after the first stint which completely throws him off (he plays a mourner in a wake and gets the fright of his life when the “corpse” in the casket raises his head), he hesitantly agrees to more work and in time, becomes overly involved with his clients' personal lives.

We follow two of his main roles. In one of them, he's hired by a woman to be the long-lost father to their young daughter Mia. His job is to project, along with the mother, a portrait of a wholesome family to the admissions committee of an elite school in order to bolster the chances of the girl's enrolment. In the other, Phillip is a “film journalist” interviewing Kikuo Hasegawa, an acting legend in his twilight years, helping the old man remember his past before his encroaching dementia robs him of all memory.

The movie uses Phillip as a guide for the audience. As a gaijin with a severe case of culture shock, Phillip is often surprised (just as we are), and has just as many questions as we do, managing these peculiar situations as an impostor. Both these roles require Phillip to commit to an extended period with regular contacts. Over time, Phillip develops a deeper understanding of Mia and Kikuo and he begins to have genuine affection and sympathy for their situations, just as we do.

As the young girl and the old man come to accept him as the genuine article, what Phillip is doing becomes more than just a job but a matter of ethics. Isn't this outright deceit?

When Mia eventually discovers that the man she has come to regard as her biological parent is really a paid actor, the same guy in a toothpaste commercial, not only is her heart broken, but what does that do to her faith and trust in grown-ups? Although the charade may have been staged for arguably good reasons, there's a human cost that seems to be wilfully unacknowledged. What Mia's mother and Phillip are doing must do some lasting harm to a child's psychology.

I find this all a little difficult to grasp and it'd be wonderful if anyone reading this is informed in Japanese culture to enlighten me on this rather unusual practice. How do you square what's going on with basic questions of honesty and truth?

We see one of Phillip's colleagues hired as a man's mistress so the philandering husband can confess to his infidelity. We can assume that the wife takes the actress to be the real Jezebel when she slaps her in anger. How is this acceptable if a proxy can be hired to take the blame for anything? With fake mistresses/bridegrooms/husbands/wives/children/friends/employees standing in to fulfil a certain function, how can people ever be certain again who's real? This is no longer wish-fulfilment but staged deception. When a new person is introduced to you, how can anyone be sure they're not trying to fool you?

To describe the humans-for-rent business as fascinating seems to downplay the troubling ethical ramifications. A business whose very foundation is built on fraud is never a venture to champion.

Here's the twist. In spite of my personal misgivings on the nature of this rental business, I can appreciate the irony that some good could come of this deception in certain situations. Emotional relief, peace, happiness, closure, psychological needs that might otherwise be unattainable become possible as a consequence of deception.

The movie is not an examination of the moral legitimacy of human rental, its strength is found in the story of unlikely connections between one such rental actors and the objects of his artifice. Brendan Fraser creates a man whose kindness is genuine, whose conscience spurs him to violate the terms of his employment to his own detriment. When Phillip kidnaps Kikuo on a “jailbreak” to fulfil an old man's final wish, it leads to a poignant moment that speaks of love, memory and empathy.

When we first see Phillip at the start of the movie, he's looking out his apartment window at the neighbours across the street. There's a sense of loneliness and yearning as he gazes at the various families from his isolation. By the time the movie ends, Phillip has made some real connections in ways he could never have expected.

From a foundation of lies, Rental Family is a heartwarming and sweet story told with affection, sincerity, humour and curious insight into human behaviour. It's about finding your true self while hiding behind a false front.

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