Release date - January 16

Cert - 12

Run-time - 1 hour 50 minutes

Director - Hikari

Small-time American actor Phillip (Brendan Fraser) gets a job working for a Tokyo business sending people out to play small, often unknown, roles in strangers' lives.

Rental Family is a perfect January film. Not as an abandoned studio horror or faded awards contender, but as a film with a warming, hopeful tone. It's a film that's as gentle and soft-spoken as Brendan Fraser's lead performance. He plays Phillip, a kind, mild-mannered American actor living in Japan, occasionally recognised for a toothpaste advert.

While waiting for a big opportunity he's invited to play 'Sad American. Thrown into a funeral with no idea what's happening, he soon discovers Rental Family, who send people to play small roles in strangers' lives, often unknown to them; having been hired by friends and family.

Whether it be interviewing a forgotten actor (Akira Emoto) for a pretend magazine or spending a few hours playing video games with someone "sometimes all we need is for someone to look us in the eye and remind us we exist."

Phillip's main role is as a father figure for young Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), to help her mother (Shino Shinozaki) get her into an esteemed school. However, as a bond starts to form between Phillip and Mia - shown in some wonderful, thoughtfully-scripted scenes, including at a Monster Cat Festival - he starts to question the morality of his new job.

As does colleague Aiko (a likable, if slightly underseen, Mari Yamamota), largely sent to cover up affairs for cheating husbands.

Co-writer (alongside Stephen Blahut) and director Hikari, with editors Alan Baumgarten and Thomas A. Krueger, seamlessly takes us from joy to disappointment and empathy to wonder-induced emotion. The emotional course of Rental Family is consistently fluid with the run-time passing by with ease, in part because of the film's gentleness.

There's a genuine heartfelt nature to the film, captured in the restraint of Fraser's performance. It's through him that most of the relationships and lives touched are seen. The balance between the characters and 'roles' Phillip takes on is well maintained whilst keeping focus on Mia, who creates the most confliction in the lead as to what his temporary roles are actually doing.

Yet, even during these questions and emotional sequences I found a warm smile on my face from the simple joy of the film as a whole. The close and comforting embrace it creates for both characters and audience. Holding engagement with good-natured laughs and heart. Heart which is in the right place and has something done with it.

Rental Family was shown towards the end of last year's London Film Festival, after tiredness had long settled in. Even the loudest of films can struggle to fully engage attention. This held me from start to finish with no risk of tiredness. Simply from the heartful emotion and gentleness on display.

It's a positive, welcoming note to open the year on. A film that simply makes us feel something, including a bit less alone while in its company.

Four stars