Start the week with a film: In ‘Rental Family’, an actor’s latest job is to imitate life

It’s cool but it’s fake, the young girl who is unimpressed by a light installation tells her father. Her father is cool but fake too. He’s an actor who has been working with a rental family agency in Tokyo, posing as a fake husband, friend or whatever his clients want him to be. He has been hired to be the girl’s father to ensure that she gets into a prestigious school.

Phillip (Brendan Fraser) has become part of the Japanese phenomenon that has vexed sociologists and psychologists but proven popular enough to spread to other countries too. People concerned with social appearances, who want events to have quorum, who want a temporary stand-in for a family member or need companions to ease their loneliness hire actors to play the parts.

In Rental Family (2025), directed by Hikari (who uses only one name), Phillip comes to Japan to star in a toothpaste commercial and doesn’t leave. He speaks Japanese and gets by with nondescript roles. His first job for the rental family company is so bizarre that he nearly quits.

But the company boss, Shinji (Takehiro Hira) is persuasive, even though Phillip’s colleague Aiko (Mari Yamamoto) is hostile. Phillip finds that playing the “token white guy” keeps him busy....

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