TIFF Review: Brendan Fraser in Rental Family

There is a phenomenon that occurs when an actor wins an Oscar that they often go forth and almost immediately appear in a better film, giving a better performance. Recent examples include Emma Stone winning an Oscar for La La Land only to appear in The Favourite, a better movie and a better performance, just two years later, and Jeff Bridges winning for Crazy Heart only to appear in True Grit the very next year, or Colin Firth’s double bill of The King’s Speech and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, you get the idea. 

The latest to experience this phenomenon is Brendan Fraser, who follows up the rather appalling The Whale, for which he won an Oscar, with the gentle and thoughtful Rental Family, in which he gives a thoroughly charming, vulnerable performance.

Rental Family comes from actress-turned-filmmaker Hikari, and it revolves around a business in which people can hire actors to perform roles in their lives, such as funeral attendee, friend, or stand-in for an apology (usually involving someone’s infidelity). This practice of “renting” people to fulfill life functions has previously been depicted in Sion Sono’s Noriko’s Dinner Table and Werner Herzog’s Family Romance, LLC. In this iteration, Brendan Fraser stars as Phillip, a struggling actor and American ex-pat now making Japan his home. His biggest credit is an old toothpaste ad campaign—the goofy commercial is included in the film and is delightfully weird and fun—and his career is on the rocks when he is hired to attend a man’s pretend funeral.

Intrigued but rather mystified by his latest gig, Phillip agrees to continue performing for the rental family business run by Shinji (Takehiro Hira). He ends up playing a lonely nerd’s friend, supporting a woman at karaoke, and being hired for a couple of longer-term “roles”, one as a journalist interviewing a dying actor, and the other as a young girl’s absentee father. There is a fun montage of Phillip going about his work, which shows the positive impact his cathartic performance can have on the firm’s clients, but ultimately, he gets too involved with a couple of clients.

Hikari’s work here is not really subtle—the film all but hits you over the head with emotion—but the thematic underpinning of the film is that we crave connection and that cynicism and aloofness are the enemy of that connection. Rental Family is a film that requires sentimentality and an audience willing to accept the premise that renting a friend, parent, child, whatever, can have an ameliorating effect on loneliness. But there is a line the actors should not cross, yet caught up in the thrill of vicarious living, Phillip ends up crossing it.

His two most involved clients are Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), a young girl whose father is not in her life, but as she is a candidate for a prestigious private school, she needs to give the appearance of stability and a solid family unit to the school’s application committee. Not wanting to hurt Mia, though, her mother (Shino Shinozaki) decides Phillip should pretend to be Mia’s dad for real and not let her know the whole thing is a ruse. You can see how this has a high potential for complete emotional devastation from a mile away. The other client is Kikuo Hasegawa (Akira Emoto), a retired actor afraid of losing his legacy. Phillip is hired to pretend to be a journalist interviewing Kikuo in his final days.

Predictably, Phillip overinvests in these clients, you can see the various heartbreaks coming from a mile away. But Rental Family’s strength is not in defying the formula, it’s how Hikari and Brendan Fraser play into the formula with delicacy and humanity. Fraser’s performance is exceptionally good, utilizing his comedy chops and his intensely vulnerable expressiveness in turn. At the beginning of the film, Phillip is lonely and disconnected, literally sitting on the sidelines watching the lives of others from his apartment balcony. But through his work as a rental personality, he begins to make connections and rediscover his joy in living, and Fraser’s whole bearing shifts as Phillip reengages with the world—even his physical gait seems lighter and bouncier than when he first appears on screen. 

Hikari’s direction is similarly committed, sentimental without being schmaltzy (she also co-wrote the film with Stephen Blahut). The film looks beautiful (with cinematography from Takurô Ishizaka), and it comes with a whimsical score from Sigur Ros’s Jónsi, and Sigur Ros’s producer, Alex Somers. Hikari’s work here recalls the similarly delicate work of Chloe Zhao and Kelly Reichardt, though Hikari is more openly emotionally manipulative than those filmmakers. In the context of Rental Family, such manipulation is not a bad thing, it’s the entire purpose of the exercise.

The film echoes what Phillip is doing within the narrative, engineering relationships to provide emotional catharsis. Rental Family is as successful in that goal as Phillip is within the film. It’s a kind of meta feedback loop that underscores the utility of the service Phillip provides. Rental Family wants to pluck your heartstrings, and it does so with charm and humor and humility, and grace for the lonely souls who yearn to connect, whatever form that connection may take. There is no judgment here, only a willing openness and a “big American” willing to be your friend, if only for a day. 

Rental Family will play exclusively in theaters from November 21, 2025.