Ryuichi Ichinokawa lives in Kawama City, a suburb of Tokyo where-unbeknownst to his wife and two sons-he is the proprietor of a most unusual business. He and his employees are “professional stand-ins,” who rent themselves out as fake spouses, parents, friends, and other relatives (“whatever you want”) to a rapidly growing Japanese customer base “desperate…to cover up a secret.” His high-traffic website proclaims “I Want To Cheer You Up.” “I'm like a handyman fixing people's social relationships,” Ryuichi explains on camera, and in Kaspar Astrup Schröder's alternately fetching, absorbing, and offbeat documentary, we witness this firsthand through both the prism of several satisfied customers and Ryuichi's alienated and estranged personal life, which in many fundamental ways, is the antithesis of what he has achieved through his business. (“I think about suicide every day,” he admits.) In the end, Rent a Family Inc. not only coalesces into a fascinating character study and incisive examination of a growing service industry in Japan, but also as a poignant, touching, ultimately sobering rumination on both the challenges of dealing with societal pressures, and the sometimes far-reaching gap between what we have, what we want and what we think we need in order to be happy.