Rental Family had its World Premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. Searchlight Pictures will release it in theaters on November 21.

From its plucky opening strings by Jónsi and Alex Somers, and twinkling cinematography, Rental Family immediately announces its intentions to burrow deep into our hearts. Co-writer/director Hikari’s film is all about relationships, specifically how we blend reality and fiction to create the other person’s perception of ourselves. It’s also about the truths and lies we tell to shield ourselves from the harsh truth.

While having lived there for seven years, Phillip Vanderploeug (Brendan Fraser) is still a gaijin, or “outsider,” to Japan. His dumb luck fame as the superhero star of a silly toothpaste commercial gave him the confidence to fully commit to breaking into the Japanese acting industry. Very few chances have come his way since, with the isolation and rejection further exposing his cracks. While wide, his smile displays no happiness, and he always seems sorry to be occupying any amount of space.

One of his auditions is for “sad American,” which requires him to wear a suit and tie. But instead of showing up at a talent agency, he stumbles into a funeral for someone he’s never met before. It turns out that the majority of the attendees were paid actors, a gathering large enough to make the deceased seem more impressive to his family. This rental service is run by Shinji Tada (Takehiro Hada), who offers a surrogate person to help fill a gap in someone’s life. Phillip’s first assignment as a full-time employee for Shinji is to be fake married to a lesbian woman so she can use the marriage license to move out of the country with her girlfriend.

Before you claim all of this to be far-fetched, I’d like to point out that it is a real practice in Japan. Filmmaker Werner Herzog made a documentary about the industry in 2019 titled Family Romance, LLC, centered on an actor hired to impersonate the missing father for a young girl. It’s an extreme and ethically dangerous line of work, with lying being a naturally needed skill. But some of these lies provide positive outcomes, such as Phillip being hired by the family of a lonely loser to help him regain his confidence. Plus, the pay is really good, and Phillip has a lovable foreign charm that makes people instantly trust him.

Rental Family at least has the bravery to dive into the reason why such an industry exists. Mental health is stigmatized in Japan, with very few opportunities for therapy or life coaching. This is still a band-aid for a gunshot wound, but it’s probably better than nothing. Everything is transactional these days, so why can’t happiness?

After those reasons, it’s best not to use the logical side of your brain anymore. Hikari leans towards the sentimental side of every decision, figuring that every problem can just be solved with a heart-to-heart conversation. Much of it is treacly, cloying at your heart at every turn. For each of the poor decisions that are made on paper, they’re excused by an apology and backed up by the universal message that humans are flawed creatures.

It would be much more unbearable to constantly hear those answers if they weren’t delivered by a top-notch cast. Fraser is incapable of registering a false emotion, lending his sympathetic charm to a character that is unearthing just as much happiness for himself as he is for others. Takehiro Hira and Mari Yamamoto are his new co-workers, each of them slowly waking up to the realization that a career built on little white lies slowly permeates into their personal lives as well.

A little more honesty goes a long way, both in Rental Family and reality. Those easier answers make for a comforting watch, yet not something that leaves a longer-lasting impression. Its heart is in the right place, and sometimes our hearts want what they want.