Rental Family is a 2025 comedy-drama film directed by Hikari, who co-wrote the screenplay with Stephen Blahut. It had its world premiere in September at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, was shown at the London Film Festival in October (where I first saw it), and went on general release in the UK today, 16 January (when I saw it again).

Phillip Vanderploeg (Brendan Fraser), an American actor living in Tokyo, searches in vain for a ‘proper’ acting job – it is seven years since he arrived in Japan and his most substantial piece of work in that time has been a Japanese toothpaste commercial. He undertakes a job as ‘Sad American’ for a company called Rental Family, owned by Shinji (Takehiro Hira), and stays with the company, taking on an unusual series of ‘roles’ ‘filling in’ for missing family members and friends.

Unused to this concept (which astonishingly is a real service available in Japan) Phillip finds it difficult to remain objective in his roles, particularly in relation to that of temporary father to Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), a young half-Japanese girl whose single mother wants to demonstrate a stable family unit to a prospective school, and that of a journalist pretending to write a profile on a retired actor, Kikuo Hasegawa (Akira Emoto), who is suffering from dementia, at the behest of his daughter.

Rental Family explores identity, lies, and loneliness in an amusing yet thought-provoking manner. It provides Fraser with an ideal showcase for his touchy-feely talents, and the supporting cast are uniformly excellent.

Films as good as this do not come along too often; it is intelligent, gentle, sweet and lyrical. Do not miss the opportunity to see it on the big screen.