Director Hikari is bringing the real-life Japanese “rental family” business to mainstream screens with “Rental Family,” a Tokyo-set comedy-drama that opened in U.S. theaters on November 21. The film stars Brendan Fraser as Phillip Vandarploeug, an American actor stuck in a stalled career who takes work at an agency that supplies paid stand-ins for clients needing a father figure, a friend, or a companion for public occasions.
Hikari co-wrote the script with Stephen Blahut and has described the story as a way to let audiences experience the practice through Phillip’s eyes, including the cultural friction of living in Japan for years and still feeling outside its social codes.
In a recent podcast interview, Hikari said she built the movie’s visual approach around the emotional distance many people felt after the pandemic, using shifts in color and camera proximity to move between loneliness and the fragile comfort Phillip finds in his hired roles. She has tied that goal to her own memories of isolation during an exchange program in the United States, and to a wider concern that modern life can leave people cut off even in crowded cities.
The premise tracks a real industry in Japan that began in the early 1990s and has grown into hundreds of companies. Clients hire performers for reasons that range from filling a seat at a wedding to easing private grief. Supporters say the services offer short-term relief for people living with loneliness or social pressure; skeptics argue they risk deepening avoidance of honest relationships. Hikari has said she met with people who work in the field and found that the exchanges can help both clients and actors, even if the bond starts as staged.
Fraser, who also serves as an executive producer, prepared by studying Japanese with a tutor and arriving in Tokyo weeks before filming to settle into daily life. He has said the role appealed to him because it treats connection as a basic need rather than a luxury, and because it lets an outsider’s perspective frame Japan with warmth and specificity.
