A film that layers untruths, lies, and deception could and maybe should be an existential slog. Instead, with Rental Family, director Hikari (also co-writer with Stephen Blahut) shapes a delicate, lilting, dreamy film that treads the liminal space between reality and unreality. It couldn’t have a better actor at its centre to set it on its way. Brendan Fraser’s presence as a washed-up actor with a melting heart feels totemic.

After seven years in Japan, American actor Phillip Vanderploeg (a disarming Fraser) may have learned the language, but he’s struggling to cement his career. Until one day, a job playing ‘sad American’ at a quirky funeral leads to the offer of recurring work at Rental Family, a company that rents out family and friends to strangers. As the agency founder Shinji (Takehiro Hira) sees it, as he collects and saves all their jobs in immaculate files, these are people who need help, and business is booming.

After a rocky start, Vanderploeg soon finds himself immersed in two particular roles. One as the long-lost father of a girl (an adorable Shannon Mahina Gorman) whose single mother is desperate to get her into a top school that requires two parents. Second, as a writer interviewing an ailing actor (an enthralling Akira Emoto) who believes he’s been forgotten by the world. As Vanderploeg becomes close to his assignments, he turns down acting opportunities he’s waited years to land and risks forgetting that this is just a job.

Rental Family gives the distinct impression of living between places and spaces. It offers a rather lovely view of Japan, uncommonly seen in a film with a Western lead, but it won’t let us totally fall on the side of Fraser’s outsider. He’s a trying to understand the culture, but we’re told more than once that this gaijin never will 

Any dips into his human wants and needs—we know little about what led him to Japan beyond one infamous job—ends up wholesome in Rental Family. A few scenes take time to show Vanderploeg observing from his small apartment, peeping onto a Rear Window stack of windows, where neighbours go about their lives, the old man, the young family and more. At other times, we see his close relationship with a sex worker. 

We’re in some murky, underbelly territory of betrayal, infidelity, and deceipt—a perilous place for a lonely character to be: gaining the trust of vulnerable characters. It’s a concept that could exploit misunderstandings both personal and cultural, and the minefield is laid out in front of us. We’re watching lies unfold with paid stakeholders, no matter what the intention. From the woman who can reassure her family with a wedding before heading to Canada with her same-sex partner to the schoolgirl who grows close to her fake dad, there are enormous, long-lasting consequences. A school-age child could be emotionally damaged for life; a grown child could lose their parent. 

Considering this, Hikari admirably keeps the emotions just on the enjoyable side of whimsy and optimism. Rental Family has a high-concept (although rental family firm’s do exist in Japan), but is as light as cherry blossom. We accompany Vanderploeg on his assignments, buoyed by the muffled notes of a dreamy score that do so much to create the tone. It’s hardly a surprise when David Byrne’s unmistakable tone pops up in the soundtrack; he’s a perfect fit.

Rental Family is very much about the journey, not the end destination where the status quo has barely changed. Events may spiral on the way, but it’s important that the drama of circumstance doesn’t outweigh the emotional. Wisely then, at the climactic point of most peril for Vanderploeg, we don’t see, but re-route to the actions of those around him.

That risks softening the satisfaction for the viewer. The side plot involving Vanderploeg’s colleague Aiko (Mari Yamamoto), who specialises in fake mistresses in the lucrative ‘apology rental’ side of the business, develops in tandem to Vanderploeg’s journey, but reaches a crescendo apparently by coincidence. There’s the sense of a guiding hand behind the scenes; we and the characters arrive at the movie’s end having shelved the misdirections and unpicked the layering of unreality, with everyone better off.