There is something quietly disarming about a film that centers connection at a time when so many people feel isolated. Hikari’s new feature “Rental Family,” opening November 21, meets that feeling head-on. The film moves with warmth and a sharp eye for human behavior, exploring a real business in Japan where people can rent stand-ins for the roles missing in their lives. What might seem unusual from a Western perspective becomes, in Hikari’s hands, a story about the ways people hold one another up when traditional or socially frowned upon support systems fall away.
“Rental Family” stars Brendan Fraser, Mari Yamamoto, and Takehiro Hira, whose combined performances give the film its emotional weight. Yamamoto, recently named one of Variety’s Top 10 Actors to Watch, delivers a quietly powerful turn as Aiko, an actress working for a company that provides stand-in family members for clients who need connection.
The film represents a continuation of Hikari’s interest in characters living on the edges of societal expectations, which she explored in her acclaimed debut “37 Seconds” and later in the Netflix series “Beef,” a project that helped lift Ali Wong and Steven Yeun to Emmy wins. Across her work, Hikari is drawn to people who feel boxed in by circumstance and still search for a way forward. “Rental Family” lives in that space, mixing humor with a gentle sadness as it examines connection through the Japanese lens of restraint and the things we don’t always say out loud.
Yamamoto speaks about the film from a deeply personal place. She auditioned for the role shortly after her father passed away, and the script’s themes of grief and surrogate connection resonated immediately. Her performance captures the film’s core idea: that healing does not always come from the people you expect, and that chosen moments of compassion, even transactional ones, can leave a real imprint.
In conversation with Awards Focus, Yamamoto reflects not only on the experience of making “Rental Family,” but on the cultural nuance that Western viewers often overlook, reveals the unseen backstory of Aiko and discusses her career arc to date.
Awards Focus: Hi, my name is Ben and I am with Awards Focus and United by Rice. Nice to meet you.
Mari Yamamoto: Hi Ben, nice to meet you.
AF: I’ll start with the beginning of the journey with “Rental Family.” How did the movie come to you, and what was your initial impression of Hikari’s vision for the story?
Yamamoto: The “Rental Family” script came to me through a regular audition process, but they sent the script with it. It was a really difficult time in my life because my father had just passed. I was really in the pits of despair, I would say. And I had always wanted to work with Hikari. I loved “37 Seconds,” “Tokyo Vice,” everything she’s done. So I was very excited.
I read the script, and there were so many themes of fatherhood in the film that really resonated with me. It felt like I was being told that the film is a little bit about replacing people in your life temporarily, and obviously you can’t replace people in your life, like your parents. But it felt like this message to me personally, that if you go out there and you are open to it, you’re going to find people who will care for you and have compassion for you and the kind of love that you know from your parents. There is something in the world out there for you.
So it was comforting and encouraging to read something like that. It was hopeful in a really hard time for me. I fell in love with the script, and my character was someone I wanted to play. She’s a deeply compassionate person who I think we need to see more of in the world. So it was a no-brainer.
AF: Thank you for sharing, and I’m sorry for your loss. The grieving process never really ends. It makes me want to ask about the scene — spoiler alert — where Brendan’s character Phillip reveals that his parent had recently passed away. What was it like to shoot that moment, and how did you balance your personal feelings with what you needed to portray on screen?
Yamamoto: I think it was an undercurrent in everything he was doing. Brendan’s character has that in the background the whole time, and we don’t find out until the end. The grieving process never ends, and it’s a constant thing running in the back of your mind.
So when acting the scene, I just had to listen. I don’t really say anything. I just had to listen to him and be there and understand. It was receiving his pain and carrying it with him.
AF: I had read about rental family-style businesses in Japan only in the last couple years. How big is this business? Is it mainstream or still more under the surface?
Yamamoto: I think it gets a lot of coverage, which might inflate how mainstream it actually is. But I do know there are 300 to 400 companies that operate in this capacity. I read about them a lot. The most recent I read was that teenage girls are renting middle-aged men to be an uncle, to give them life advice.
It spoke to the need for a father figure in these girls’ lives. They don’t get a lot of face time with their own fathers because Japanese dads work long hours. It’s a tough life being a corporate worker in Japan. I think they’re missing that father-daughter aspect of life, and they reach out to these companies to rent older men. It’s really interesting. And I do think there is a real need.
AF: Westerners might view this type of activity as something subversive or even perversive. What do you hope Western audiences actually take away from the portrayal in the film?
Yamamoto: It’s interesting because a middle-aged American man came up to me and said, “I despise this business, but I love the film.” I asked him to consider the Japanese cultural aspect. Everyone comes back from Japan saying how kind, polite, considerate Japanese people are, and I’m proud of that.
But it can be a double-edged sword. Because we are so in tune with what other people are thinking and feeling, we’re often unable to express our own desires and needs for fear of being a burden. That applies not just to friends but to families too.
I’ve heard stories of parents who say after the fact, “Your father had an operation; he’s fine,” because they don’t want to worry you. That’s our love language — not burdening you.
That’s why there’s a need for something like this in Japan. And mental health services aren’t widely understood or accessible. If you think about it in Western society, everyone has therapists. It’s a transactional relationship where you express your needs. This is similar — you’re asking someone to be a certain figure for you — but the basis is similar.
AF: One of your lines to Brendan’s character is “You’re a gaijin. You’ll never understand.” Is that what Aiko is talking about?
Yamamoto: Yeah. The not burdening people part is the hardest to understand for someone from a Western culture. Why wouldn’t you want your closest people to support you during the hardest times? But this is a deeper look into Japanese culture that the film can offer.
Everyone is trying their best. Like the single mom who lies to her kid — people take issue with that — but the film shows what it is to be a single mom in Japan. There is prejudice. You can’t even get your kid into a good school.
The film shows the social rules and norms that put us in situations where we have nowhere to go but turn to things like rental family.
AF: There’s a pivotal bar scene where Aiko’s composure finally breaks. What did that moment represent for her, and how did Brendan’s performance shape the way it ultimately played out on screen? Did you have more of a backstory that we didn’t see on screen?
Yamamoto: We shot a lot that isn’t in the film. There was a scene where I talk about what I used to do before and why I ended up there. That was a huge piece of the puzzle. I needed to understand why she cares so much, almost to a psychotic degree, about her clients.
Her backstory in the script was that something happened to her. She was an actress. Something happened and she couldn’t be one anymore. She met Tada (Takehiro Hira) during that time and got recruited.
People want to be useful. To have a purpose is to be of use to somebody. She finds purpose because it’s acting for one audience, and she feels in real time how she’s affecting someone.
Knowing what happened to her was crucial — nobody was there for her. She has a need to be there for people so she can heal herself a little. Every time she helps someone, it helps her.
You think it’s a little strange that a seemingly very strong and outspoken woman like this would take on a job like the apology gigs. So that contradiction — I also had to figure out why she allows this to happen. I realized it’s the most popular service. So she justifies it by saying, if I take one for the team, we get revenue to keep the company going so I can actually help the people who need this. It was piecing it together piece by piece.
It’s such a relatable scene for so many people because a lot of microaggressions or things that happen to us, we normalize so we can carry on with our day. In this case, she tries to protect herself: wearing a wig, having a costume, telling herself, “It’s not you this is happening to. I’m okay.” But that facade cracks after she’s hit.
She tries to brush it under the rug. And then Brendan’s character comes along, and as he does with every character, he just holds space for people to be themselves and be whatever they need in that moment. And he tells her, “That’s not okay.”
That scene played out so differently because of the level of compassion he brought. I couldn’t hold it in. When I read it, I thought she just brushes it off. But you can’t help but open up to somebody like Brendan Fraser.
AF: If you were to hire someone from a rental-family agency for your own life, who would it be?
Yamamoto: I would rent a grandmother. Both of my grandmothers passed away before I was born, and I’ve always been envious of people with grandparents. It feels like this extra blanket of love. I befriend older people all the time. There’s a need in me for a grandparent figure. I’d rent a grandmother and just have tea and hear her life story.
AF: Congratulations on being named one of Variety’s Top 10 to Watch. What did that moment feel like?
Yamamoto: I didn’t expect any of this. Being able to write and act, that was the dream. To be a working actor was the dream. When my publicist told me, I was floored. And being among the other actors, it was a pinch-me moment. When I was at Newport Film Festival, even the question “How does it feel to be here?” felt surreal.
AF: Your career is on a great trajectory with “Pachinko” and “Monster.” Ironically, your characters have been connected to Anna Sawai.
Yamamoto: Yeah, I hope we do more together. She’s just the greatest, and we’re good friends. So I hope we can work together again.
AF: Do you feel you’re reaching a point where you can choose more roles?
Yamamoto: I’m not sure. All I hear is the industry is really slow. I hear so many people struggling — people who are way more established than me.
But I’ve always focused on my own track. My career path is different than anyone I’ve ever met. I don’t have the conventional career — actually, nobody does — but I’ve been in so many different industries. I discovered acting after having done so many things, and it finally felt like the thing I want to do.
Having a writing background and being able to write, I’m focused on writing my own material — something for myself and for people I want to work with — and making that happen. When people ask me to read something, I feel tenderness because I know what it is to hand someone your baby. Whatever I do, I want to make it better.
Awards Focus: Thank you so much. It was wonderful speaking with you. Congratulations on a beautiful performance.
Yamamoto: Thank you so much. Nice to meet you.