I was intrigued enough when I saw the Rental Family trailer that I forked over my money to see the film in theaters. Even a couple of weeks later, I’m still pondering the film’s plot, reflecting on just how much we as human beings long for authentic relationships, and the sometimes crazy lengths we’ll go to get them.
In Rental Family, Academy Award-winning actor, Brendan Fraser, plays Phillip Vanderploeg, an American actor living in Japan. His sparse apartment looks out on another apartment complex and Phillip spends his evenings watching the tenants he can see from his window. He seems fascinated by the lives of his neighbors and pleased that they have lives. Once famous for his role in a toothpaste commercial, Phillip now jumps at any chance for a job, no matter how small. When his agent calls with an opportunity, he asks, “What’s the role?” The answer: the sad American.
When he makes it to the gig, he finds himself walking in on a fake funeral. The guy in the coffin isn’t dead, but a small crowd of people dressed in black are mourning him. Confused, Phillip plays along. When it’s all over, he bumps into Shinji (Takehiro Hira) who offers him a chance at more stable employment. Arriving at the Rental Family offices the next day, Phillip discovers that Shinji’s firm supplies actors to play roles in real people’s lives and they need a “token white guy.” Perplexed and uncomfortable with the idea but in need of work, Phillip joins the firm.
One client, a single mom, hires Phillip to pretend he’s her daughter’s father. She wants her daughter, Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), to get into a prestigious private school, but the administrators won’t consider a child from a single-parent home. Playing Mia’s dad, Phillip spends time with the 11-year-old, taking her places, getting their faces painted together. As their bond grows, Mia becomes like a new person, so grateful that her “father” is in her life. Phillip revels in the child’s growing affection, healing some of his own loneliness. Once Mia gets accepted to the school, however, the gig is up and Phillip tells a devastated Mia her dad has to return to the States.
Phillip’s other gig is posing as a journalist writing a piece about Kikuo Hasegawa (Akira Emoto), a once-famous actor now dealing with the onset of dementia. Kikuo’s daughter hires Phillip so that her father will feel like he’s not forgotten. Phillip, although only playing a part, begins to consider Kikuo a friend and enjoys spending time with him. When Kikuo begs Phillip to take him to his hometown, something his daughter won’t do, Phillip has to weigh the consequences of going against the client’s wishes.
Brendan Fraser, a ’90s heartthrob who was out of the acting scene for a while before his award-winning role in 2023’s The Whale, is superb as Phillip. He has a way of drawing the viewer into the emotions he’s feeling as his character interacts with the people he’s hired, in essence, to dupe. The supporting characters, Mia, Kikuo, and even Shinji and Aiko (Mari Yamamoto), who run the firm, only enhance the emotional core of the film, making the fact that these relationships are fake that much tragic.
Evidently, practices like this exist in Japan, where honoring one’s parents and preserving social harmony carry significant cultural weight. For various reasons, some individuals turn to services such as these. One story depicted in Rental Family is the hiring of a woman to pose as a girlfriend and offer an apology to a spouse after infidelity.
As an observer from outside this cultural context, it is important to approach these practices with humility. At the same time, the situation invites reflection on the universal longing for genuine relationship, and it raises questions about authenticity, vulnerability and healing. This has been made even more pressing in the age of artificial intelligence as people, particularly teens, turn for companionship to chatbots, rather than people.
Rental Family provides an intriguing commentary of the human longing for authenticity. As people, we look for authenticity in ourselves, our spouses, our friends, our secular and religious leaders, our celebrities. Young people are especially good at sniffing out inauthenticity. With inauthenticity around us, especially in the digital world, it takes hard work to nurture authentic relationships. We can take a page out of the Gospel and look to Jesus for what true, authentic relationships are all about.