Three years after his triumphant Oscar win for “The Whale,” Brendan Fraser has found his next deeply personal project in an unlikely place: Tokyo.

In Hikari’s “ Rental Family ,” Fraser plays Philip, an American actor adrift in Japan who discovers unexpected purpose — and genuine human connection — when he’s hired to play a surrogate family member for people struggling with loneliness.

The film arrives at a moment when its themes feel particularly urgent. “This film really doesn’t have a declared villain,” Fraser says on the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast , settling into a conversation about the project that took him back overseas. “I mean, there are obstacles, of course, but they’re really our social, personal constructs.”

For Fraser, the appeal was immediate and multifaceted. “

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