Brendan Fraser fakes it ’til he makes it.

Directed with a delicate, unassuming touch by Hikari, Rental Family explores the curious, often melancholic intersection of commercial artifice and genuine human connection through a uniquely Japanese lens. When Phillip Vanderploeg (Brendan Fraser), a struggling American actor living in Tokyo who finds himself adrift takes a last-minute job as a mourner at a staged funeral, a job that leads to a series of ongoing assignments with a Rental Family agency: a real-world Japanese phenomenon where actors are hired to fill voids in their clients’ lives.

The transactional nature of the services depicted offers a fascinating window into a society where the preservation of public dignity often takes precedence over individual psychological wellbeing but while Rental Family is rooted in a trenchant observation of the cultural disdain for mental and emotional health issues, the film doesn’t centre this cultural cross-examination, preferring instead to explore the real connections that are created behind the artifice.

Brendan Fraser continues his recent comeback run of deeply empathetic performances, portraying Phillip as a man seeking genuine connection in a world which only wants the superficial. His performance is vital because Fraser possesses an innate, soulful quality that prevents Phillip from appearing cynical or opportunistic. As he navigates his various assignments – a groom to a young woman trying to please her parents or a friend to a lonely and depressed salaryman – the film examines the powerful influences people can have on each other and how important human connection is.

Two assignments dominate the Phillip’s life, though, one as the “long-lost father” to a young girl (Shannon Mahina Gorman) hoping to attend a prestigious school and the other as a “journalist” seeking to interview elderly reclusive filmmaker Kikuo Hasegawa (Akira Emoto). Of course, Phillip can’t help but overstep the bounds of Japanese society, exceeding his brief and having a profound impact on the lives of his clients as well as those of his colleagues at the agency who are forced to reexamine what they do and why, as agency owner Shinji (Takehiro Hira) and Aiko (Mari Yamamoto), a fellow rental employee, confront the real cost of some of their services.

Thankfully, Rental Family isn’t a story about a Westerner finding salvation in the East; rather it suggests that the desire for belonging is a universal currency, even if the methods of achieving it might differ across cultures. Tokyo isn’t shot as some exotic elsewhere, or a neon-drenched techno-dystopia but as an everyday suburban environment, a city full of anonymous people.

One of the most impressive feats of Rental Family is its tonal consistency, managing to be wryly funny without ever tipping over into mawkish or sentimental. There’s a gentle absurdity to some of the situations Phillip finds himself in, but it never mocks the clients or their needs, holding a profound respect for the human condition at the heart of the film.