TIFF 2025 Review: Rental Family – “a highly enjoyable watch.”

To say that Phillip (Brendan Fraser) sticks out from the crowd would be an understatement.  He’s a tall, white man, squeezing into the small spaces of Tokyo.  He eats sitting on the bed of his tiny apartment while he watches his neighbours in their own little boxes.  There’s the family with the newborn, an older man hanging his laundry, and friends sharing stories over a beer.  Through these windows, vignettes of lives not his own.

As an actor, Phillip moved to Japan 7 years ago, where he was the face of a toothpaste brand.  But as well as being lost in his private life, professionally his career is in need of a boost.  So when his agent calls with a somewhat odd booking, he hops on a train.  The role? “Sad American” at a fake funeral.  Phillip is confused, but it’s here he meets the owner of a ‘Rental Family business’ (Takehiro Hira).  If you need a boyfriend for an event, a husband for a day, all you need to do is rent.  And, as luck would have it, the company is in need of a “token white guy.”

The problem becomes when Phillip gets ‘cast’ as a father to Mia (an adorable Shannon Gorman) in order to help get her into a top school.  And as a journalist working on a piece about an ageing actor (Akira Emoto).  Things start to get personal on these jobs and Phillip starts to wonder if he is hurting or helping those who he’s been hired to assist.  Phillip starts to get too close.  “Sometimes the story we tell ourselves becomes the truth,” says Phillip’s colleague (Mari Yamamoto), and he himself starts to fall victim to his own roles.

Director Hikari follows up her 2019 film 37 Seconds with Rental Family, a film that is all about connection.  At her Q&A period post film, she notes that mental health is still stigmatized in many parts of Japan and these rental family companies truly exist as an alternative.  And it could be easy to see how such a thing might in fact help. Feeling lonely and don’t want to go to your friend’s wedding solo? Why not.  Have a work function and need a high-powered connection to impress your boss? Sure. Yet, in this film, we also see the pain these situations can bring.  By posing as Mia’s father, Phillip is predictably setting her up for her second round of abandonment.  And it goes just how you would expect.

Rental Family is mostly predictable, and only skims the surface of the complexities these situations can bring.  Yet there is a darker side here, much of which is brought out by a wonderful and underutilized Yamamoto, whose rented ‘character’ is often a husband’s mistress in an ‘apology’ scheme.  I could have watched an entire movie based on her, but that would have been a very different feel than the lighthearted, compassionate film Hikari has created.

As Rental Family plays out amongst the beautiful shots of Tokyo, and even outside the city, you can’t help but feel a little like the film has emotionally manipulated you as much as the employed rental actors do their clients.  Yet, Fraser is so empathetic and sensitive in his portrayal of Phillip that by film’s end you’ll find yourself giving in to the sentiment.  Rental Family is a highly enjoyable watch whose cast elevates it beyond the source material.  It certainly managed to work its way into my heart.  It’s an audience pleaser, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it finds itself in the running for the TIFF People’s Choice Award.

Rental Family had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, September 6, 2025.  For more information, head to tiff.net