‘Rental Family’ review: Brendan Fraser shines as a lost soul seeking connection in Tokyo-set drama

Dir: Hikari. US/Japan. 2025. 110mins

Philip (Brendan Fraser) is a struggling American actor living in Tokyo, searching for human connection. After bouncing from audition to audition, he finds a calling when Shinji Tada (Takehiro Hira), the owner of a small role-playing firm called Rental Family, hires him to play the token white guy in the many real-life scenarios their lonely clients need fulfilled. In a role requiring far less artifice than his physically transformative Oscar-winning performance in The Whale, Fraser puts a face to forlornness in an unconventional, endearing crowd pleaser. 

Fraser’s unadorned, affecting performance plays in line with his easy-to-love persona

Premiering in Toronto and playing at London, this Searchlight release opens in the US on November 21 and the UK on January 6. That should put Rental Family squarely in the awards conversation; particularly Fraser, whose unadorned, affecting ‘tug at the heartstrings’ performance plays in line with his easy-to-love persona.

The film is further strengthened by director Hikari’s loose thematic dexterity and visual acumen. While the filmmaker found mainstream acclaim by directing episodes of the Netflix series Beef, thematically Rental Family more closely matches her 2019 debut 37 Seconds (which won Berlin’s Panorama audience award)  by touching on relevant topics like isolation, sex work and chosen communities.    

After seven years living in Tokyo, Phillip is tired of playing the ‘sad American’. In the film’s opening montage, we see Phillip move through this bustling metropolis to several auditions that range from being a detective to dressing up as a tree. As he trudges into his tiny apartment, we get the sense that all of Phillip’s days end like this: sitting on his bed with takeout sushi, watching families across the street partaking in their vibrant lives. Seeing a lonely American actor moving through Japan obviously brings to mind Bill Murray’s sardonic turn in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. Unlike that film, however, we’re not looking at Japan’s culture through a tourist’s point of view. Philip has a genuine desire to understand and be part of it.

When Phillip lands the job at Rental Family, Aoki (Mari Yamamoto), the firm’s second in command, is doubtful of Phillip’s ability to apprehend Japanese culture. In his first role, for instance, he’s a white Canadian engaged to an Asian woman hoping to leave her family. Phillip worries about the deceit. Isn’t he destroying her life by engaging in a sham marriage? His boss doesn’t see it that way. They’re not selling lies; they’re selling emotions. 

The majority of the film surrounds two of Phillip’s clients. One is a fading Japanese movie star (Akira Emoto) battling dementia. For him, Phillip poses as a journalist assigned to do a career-spanning interview. The other is a single mother, who hopes that by Phillip posing as the father of her daughter Mia (Shannon Gorman), the girl will gain the confidence to ace her interview for a competitive private school. For Phillip, a man who never knew his father, this awakens the hurt that lurks underneath his genial exterior.

Hikari and Stephen Blahuther’s organic scripting allows for further truths to emerge in a film that seamlessly blends the boundary between fantasy and reality. While cinematographer Takurô Ishizaka includes plenty of sight gags of the towering Fraser navigating this foreign environment, he also observes therse characters wandering the cluttered streets of Tokyo. Jon Thor Birgisson and Alex Somers’s soul-stirring score enhances the longing to be seen and recognized.

Some components are too neatly rendered—the sudden disappearance from the film of Phillip’s sex working partner, for example. Yet the sincerity of Rental Family’s characters, the Tokyo location and a narrative playfulness more than make up for the film’s less complex threads.