Rental Family (2025)
Directed by Hikari
An American actor in Tokyo struggles to find purpose until he lands an unusual gig: working for a Japanese 'rental family' agency, playing stand-in roles for strangers. As he immerses himself in his clients' worlds, he begins to form genuine bonds that blur the lines between performance and reality.
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25 films that influenced Rental Family
What critics say influenced Rental Family
Think Lost in Translation (dir. Sofia Coppola, 2003)…
This nuance distinguishes the film from Lost in Translation, to which comparisons are inevitable. Unlike Coppola’s moody tale of disconnection, Rental Family treats Tokyo not as a mysterious backdrop but as a real home Phillip desperately wants to belong to.
…en una variante de 'Lost in Translation' (o el reverso de la magnífica serie de Nathan Fielder en HBO Max, 'Los ensayos') centrada en el buen rollo entre personas y culturas…
Seeing a lonely American actor moving through Japan obviously brings to mind Bill Murray’s sardonic turn in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation.
Lulu Wang’s The Farewell (2019) beautifully demonstrates the possibility of a love that isn’t in tension with lying, devotion that protects the beloved from emotional burden that doesn’t promote good living.
Echoing a similar dynamic seen in Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, our American protagonist is thrown by the idea of lying to and for real people.
The latter themes makes “Rental Family” a potential companion piece with Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell” (2019) as Phillip begins to open himself up to Japan and a more eastern way of looking at the world.
From Werner Herzog’s Family Romance, LLC (2019) to endless YouTube documentaries, the “rental family” industry—where clients hire actors to play fathers, spouses, or friends—has become modern shorthand for urban alienation.
Werner Herzog made an entire movie about it, Family Romance LLC, one of his rare narrative features.
The phenomenon has been made into a film before, but few have probably seen Werner Herzog's 2019 "Family Romance, LLC," which centers on a storyline also central to cowriter (with Stephen Blahut)/director Hikari's ("37 Seconds," TV's 'Beef') film…
…o el reverso de la magnífica serie de Nathan Fielder en HBO Max, 'Los ensayos'…
What if Hirokazu Kore-eda directed an episode of The Rehearsal? On paper, this is what Rental Family brings to mind. Like the Japanese auteur’s brilliant After Life, or Nathan Fielder’s strange series, this Brendan Fraser-fronted film follows an acting troupe committed to helping people on a bigger scale through their craft.
…which often plays like something Nathan Fielder might attempt on “The Rehearsal.”
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For all the Anoras and Pretty Women, Rental Family is one of the few taking a microscope to the friendship side of business.
Phillip’s transformative experiences lead to a slight Pretty Woman effect in Rental Family, where the hired employee or undercover person falls for the role, and doesn’t want to or know best how to exit their place when the work is done.
…him overlooking his neighbors in a Rear Window-inspired scene…
On Spielberg, rather than any one film
Hikari and Blahut must have went to the Steven Spielberg school of emotional manipulation.
(Think of something akin to “The Apartment.”)
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Todos nos hemos sentido alguna vez como si fuéramos Jim Carrey en 'El show de Truman', pero pocos se preguntan qué pasa con los cientos de actores contratados para mantener el circo de pulgas.
Like the Japanese auteur’s brilliant After Life, or Nathan Fielder’s strange series, this Brendan Fraser-fronted film follows an acting troupe committed to helping people on a bigger scale through their craft.
Like with Broker, where the characters are doing something despicable but in a likeable manner, filmmaker HIKARI has achieved a similar feat with Rental Family that essentially deals with a company that manipulates peoples’ emotions for their clients’ benefit.
Where Lost in Translation romanticised cultural distance and something like Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters interrogated the meaning of family through crime and survival, Rental Family situates itself somewhere between.
Akira Emoto, Shoplifters…