Rental Family (2025)

Plot of Rental Family: Phillip Vanderploeg is an actor based in Tokyo whose one success is having been featured in a toothpaste ad. Almost accidentally he finds himself working for a company which provides ‘family members’ for money to attend funerals and other services. Philip is hired to be a bridegroom for a lesbian lady, who wishes to please her family and later is hired to be the estranged American father of a girl whose mother wishes her to be accepted by a private school. He turns down a role in Korea to maintain the relationship, but when the girl finds out that he is actually an actor she falls out with him. He later takes on the role of being a journalist writing the life story of an old actor who is suffering from dementia, and compromises his future when he takes the old guy to his roots on a Japanese island and is accused of kidnap.

Content: There is actually no sex or nudity, but Phillip is seen in bed with a lady who is obviously hired and, curiously, a scene of a female dancer in flowing robes who flashes her genitalia to an audience of middle-aged men (not to us), who applaud.  When he is hired to be the bridegroom he is chickening out, making the owner of the rental company and his assistant search for him in a formal situation. It is laugh out loud funny. Phillip’s relationship with the girl and the old actor persist through most of the film, with their various problems because he becomes too involved in their lives, despite advice from the owner of the company where he is ‘the token white man’.

A View: We know, or if we did not we know now, that in Japan people are hired to make up the numbers at funerals and the like, and this is a well written warm presentation of that process. I am not sure how well qualified I am to write about it since I saw the film with my wife in Madrid so it was nearly all in Japanese with Spanish subtitles, but despite my poor Spanish I understood nearly everything that happened apart from the job of the assistant to the owner of Rental Family, who had to take on the role of mistress and apologise to the wives, sometimes being attacked. Known as ‘apology services’.  So, in summary, an unusual film which is well worth the ticket price at your local arthouse.

Fun Fact: Akira Emoto, who plays the old actor is indeed a very successful actor with an extensive CV and two sons who are also actors.