Fraser\u2019s presence is crucial to Rental Family, director Hikari\u2019s examination of one of the many ways in which we Band-Aid our loneliness, outside the AI chatbots, Instagram feeds, and plastic tchotchkes. Japan, here, has a culturally specific practice: the employment of strangers, like Fraser\u2019s American actor Phillip Vanderploeg, to fill the missing presences in people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n
As Hikari demonstrates, that encompasses a fairly broad spectrum: a gamer in search of a co-op buddy; a lesbian in need of a groom to present to her homophobic parents (she\u2019s really wedded the \u201cfriend\u201d standing patiently to the side); a man who stages his own funeral, complete with mourners, so he can remember why he\u2019s alive.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a practice already explored in Western cinema by some of its greatest nihilists. In Werner Herzog\u2019s Family Romance, LLC (2019) and Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019s Alps (2011), which focused specifically on the impersonation of dead relatives, the concern is primarily with the slipperiness of reality and identity. Hikari\u2019s film offers a considered rebuttal. She\u2019s a Japanese filmmaker who\u2019s lived much of her life in the US, and there\u2019s a sense here that Rental Family seeks to straddle both the insider and outsider viewpoints.<\/p>\n
And with Fraser as her figurehead, it\u2019s certainly a work of broad and deep compassion. But there are self-imposed limitations that you\u2019d wish Hikari and her co-writer Stephen Blahut would cross, if not purely out of curiosity: bigger questions about the complicated dynamics at play, or a view of Tokyo that feels a little more quotidian and less the pristine postcard where, around every corner, there\u2019s a cat monster festival and a pricey burlesque club.<\/p>\n
![\"Shannon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/RF_21088_v1.jpeg\")
Shannon Gorman and Brendan Fraser in \u2018Rental Family\u2019 (Searchlight Pictures)<\/p>\n
Phillip, who has his own troubled history, has come to the city for a fresh start. His only success has been the role of a superhero mascot in a toothpaste commercial. And so he falls into a job at Rental Family, a company run by Shinji (Takehiro Hira), and is set up with two significant clients.<\/p>\n
The first is a single mother, Hitomi (Shino Shinozaki), whose mixed-race daughter Mia (Shannon Gorman) needs a \u201cfather\u201d to sit in on the interview for a prestigious secondary school. The second is Kikuo Hasegawa (Akira Emoto), an actor nearing the end of his life and in need of companionship. Phillip poses as a journalist shadowing him for a career retrospective. Mia, of course, charms him with her innocence, Kikuo with his wisdom.<\/p>\n
Mia is told that Phillip is her actual father. So, what happens when the contract ends? How lasting can a connection be when it\u2019s built on a lie? Rental Family sidesteps the full brunt of these questions, and the repercussions of Phillip\u2019s colleague Aiko\u2019s (Mari Yamamoto) work posing as various mistresses so that betrayed wives have someone else to blame other than their own husbands.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not so curious about the \u201cwhy\u201d behind it all, besides Shinji\u2019s rushed explanation that any form of mental distress is particularly stigmatised in Japan. Instead, Rental Family ends with the most on-the-nose of images: a reminder that Fraser, with those shimmery pools for eyes, is an endless source of feeling.<\/p>\n
Dir: Hikari. Starring: Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Mahina Gorman, Akira Emoto. Cert 12A, 110 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u2018Rental Family\u2019 is in cinemas from 16 January<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-371926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}