Family Romance, LLC (2019)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Family Romance, LLC (2019) – W. Herzog

When a student from his “Rogue Film School” told Herzog about his idea for a film based on the real Japanese company “Family Romance” which loans out trained actors to play the part of family members at various occasions, the famed director promptly decided to make the film himself. Moreover, he also served as his own director of photography, using a handheld 4K digital camera and shooting on location (and sometimes guerrilla style).  He claims that this got him back in the spirit of his early innovative films (such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God).  Perhaps, however, the real link to his oeuvre (which always blended fiction with reality) was the decision to cast the real owner of Family Romance (Yuichi Ishii) as his lead actor (playing himself) and to write the screenplay, based in part on Ishii’s business anecdotes and in part on his own fascination with Japan and more generally with the way that humans play roles in all aspects of their lives, blending “truth” or authenticity with lies (often white lies) and play-acting, for the benefit of relationships and others’ feelings. The central story is about Ishii being paid to play the role of a missing father to a young 12-year-old girl (Mahiro).  He tells her he has been away since the divorce but now wants to be a part of her life.  The mother gives Ishii enough background in order to play the role convincingly.  However, tension arises for Ishii as the girl opens up to him and starts to form a real bond.  He starts to imagine various ways that the relationship will have to end when the contract is up.  We also see various other assignments for Ishii and his company that allow Herzog to indulge his various interests (in a robot hotel or the making of a viral video celebrity). Indeed, one of the flaws of the film is that Herzog tends to impose himself on the project (albeit without his distinctive voiceover) rather than let the players speak for themselves. Perhaps we would have learned more from Ishii himself than from the words put in his mouth by Werner. The script itself doesn’t quite congeal as much as I would have hoped either. Nevertheless, the film did manage to tantalise this viewer by raising questions about fiction vs. reality, the accountant’s truth vs. ecstatic truth (see Herzog on Herzog), a Goffmanian dramaturgical perspective on self-presentation (“all the world’s a stage”), socialisation and relationships (how we learn to act from “role” models), etc. At the end, perhaps we may also wonder, alongside Ishii, whether anyone is really authentic, including our real family members!