Rental Family: Review
Directed by Hikari and co-written with Stephen Blahut, Rental Family is a quietly profound comedy-drama that balances tender human connection with sharp cultural observation. Anchored by an emotionally rich performance from Brendan Fraser, the film explores loneliness, chosen identity, and performance in both the literal and emotional sense. It is a gentle, thoughtful work that sneaks up on the viewer with its sincerity, occasionally uneven but deeply affecting in its best moments.
Set in contemporary Japan, the story follows Phillip Vandarploeug, an American actor stranded in professional purgatory after the fleeting success of a toothpaste commercial. With real acting opportunities scarce, Phillip accepts work at a peculiar agency that supplies clients with “rent-a-families” and fabricated social relationships for deeply personal reasons. The premise is inherently strange, yet the film treats it with careful restraint. Rather than exploiting the concept for broad satire or cheap laughs, Hikari approaches it as a fragile emotional ecosystem—one where longing, shame, hope, and desperation quietly coexist.
Brendan Fraser delivers one of his most understated and humane performances in years. Gone is the bombast of his earlier action-hero persona; in its place is a soft-spoken, emotionally available presence that feels perfectly calibrated for this story. Phillip is not portrayed as a savior figure or a wide-eyed foreigner amazed by Japanese culture. Instead, he feels like a man stalled in life, living on borrowed time and borrowed identities, trying to reconnect with purpose through the roles he plays both on and off the stage.
Opposite him, Takehiro Hira brings quiet authority and moral ambiguity to Shinji, the owner of the Rental Family agency. Hira’s performance is intentionally restrained—his expressions rarely flashy, his motivations allowed to remain partially opaque. Shinji is neither villain nor saint; he embodies the film’s central tension between emotional utility and emotional exploitation. His calm professionalism contrasts beautifully with Phillip’s growing internal conflict over what “authenticity” even means in a fabricated relationship.
Mari Yamamoto delivers one of the film’s most quietly powerful performances as Aiko, a fellow rental actor whose professional obligations increasingly clash with her personal sense of dignity. Yamamoto conveys immense emotional weight through small gestures and careful line readings, making her character’s moral struggle one of the film’s most haunting undercurrents. Meanwhile, veteran actor Akira Emoto gives Kikuo a poignant fragility—his gentle confusion, flickering memory, and buried regret rendered with heartbreaking subtlety.
Young Shannon Mahina Gorman is remarkably natural as Mia, a child navigating disappointment, guarded hope, and emotional vulnerability with realism that never feels forced. Her evolving dynamic with Phillip forms the emotional spine of the film and provides many of its most quietly devastating moments.
Hikari’s direction is deceptively simple but deeply intentional. Scenes are often allowed to breathe, with long quiet pauses that invite the viewer to sit inside the emotional discomfort of the characters. The film resists melodrama, favoring restraint over overt sentimentality. This minimalism enhances the emotional payoff when conflict finally surfaces—not through explosive confrontations, but through soft, painful realizations.
Thematically, Rental Family explores what it means to perform intimacy in a society that increasingly compartmentalizes emotional labor. The idea of “renting” human connection is treated not as science-fiction dystopia, but as a logical extension of modern isolation. The film asks difficult questions without heavy-handed answers: If comfort feels real, does its origin matter? Is a performed relationship automatically dishonest, or is emotional care still genuine regardless of its contractual foundation?
Phillip’s arc reflects these questions beautifully. He begins seeing his work as a temporary financial lifeline, but gradually experiences emotional fulfillment he has lacked in his real life. His struggle is not about rejecting the artificiality of his job outright, but about learning where performance ends and responsibility begins. The script never reduces him to a moral mouthpiece; instead, it lets his contradictions remain unresolved in ways that feel authentically human.
Visually, the film maintains a subdued, naturalistic aesthetic. Urban Japan is depicted with subdued realism rather than glossy tourism appeal. Apartment interiors feel lived-in and slightly claustrophobic, reinforcing the emotional confinement many characters experience. In contrast, moments of quiet reflection and travel are shot with soft natural light and careful framing, emphasizing impermanence, memory, and quiet beauty.
The camera often lingers at a respectful distance rather than intruding into moments of emotional vulnerability. This observational style reinforces the thematic idea that the audience, much like Phillip himself, is often a witness to constructed intimacy rather than fully authentic connection. The film’s pacing may feel deliberate to the point of slowness for some viewers, but that patience is crucial to the emotional accumulation that defines its final act.
The screenplay by Hikari and Stephen Blahut is strongest when focusing on interpersonal nuance rather than plot mechanics. Dialogue is understated, often elliptical, allowing emotional truths to emerge through implication rather than exposition. The script wisely avoids overexplaining the ethics of the rental family industry, letting the audience gradually assemble its own moral framework through observation.
What truly elevates the writing is its willingness to live in moral gray areas. No character is demonized for needing connection, and no solution is framed as universally correct. Even moments of conflict arise less from villainy than from incompatible emotional needs. This refusal to simplify emotional complexity gives the film its lingering resonance.
However, the script occasionally struggles with balance. With multiple client storylines unfolding simultaneously, some arcs feel more fully realized than others. A few secondary narratives hint at deeper psychological territory than the film has time to fully explore. While this fragmented structure mirrors the episodic nature of the rental business, it occasionally dilutes the narrative focus.
One of the film’s greatest achievements is its cultural sensitivity. Phillip’s status as a foreigner in Japan is never played for cheap comedy. Instead, it becomes a lens through which themes of displacement, identity, and emotional translation are examined. Hikari avoids exoticizing Japanese culture and instead portrays it as richly textured, modern, and internally complex.
The film also avoids presenting Western emotional authenticity as inherently superior. Phillip is not positioned as someone bringing emotional truth to a supposedly emotionally repressed society. Rather, he is shown learning from the emotional frameworks already in place, even as he wrestles with their ethical implications.
The score is sparse and unobtrusive, relying heavily on ambient sound and quiet piano motifs. Music is used not to manipulate emotions, but to underscore moments of reflection and transition. Silence, in many scenes, is more powerful than sound—allowing the weight of unspoken emotion to settle without distraction. This restraint suits the film’s meditative tone and reinforces its focus on internal rather than external drama.
Rental Family is a deeply humane film that explores modern loneliness with empathy, restraint, and emotional intelligence. Brendan Fraser’s quietly luminous performance anchors a story that could have easily slipped into sentimentality or conceptual gimmickry but instead finds authenticity in stillness, ambiguity, and moral tension. Hikari’s direction favors emotional accumulation over dramatic spectacle, rewarding patient viewers with moments of aching beauty and bittersweet reflection.
The film is not without its minor flaws—its pacing may test some audiences, and a few narrative threads feel underdeveloped—but these issues never overwhelm its emotional clarity or thematic richness. What lingers most is not a plot twist or grand statement, but a persistent emotional residue: the sense that connection, even when leased or performed, still leaves a lasting imprint on those who give and receive it.
In the end, Rental Family stands as a thoughtful meditation on what it means to belong, to pretend, and to care in a world where intimacy can be commodified but never fully controlled. It is a quiet triumph—modest in scale, generous in spirit, and deeply resonant long after the final scene fades.
We hope you're enjoying BRWC. You should check us out on our social channels, subscribe to our newsletter, and tell your friends. BRWC is short for battleroyalewithcheese.
Trending on BRWC:
Frankenstein: Review
Die My Love: The BRWC Review
Game – The BRWC Review
Sisu: Road To Revenge – Review
