Family Romance, LLC

source: Family Romance, LLC

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All things and people appear in disguise What are the limits between fiction and reality? Herzog analyzes loneliness in the 21st century. How to fill that void or accept the inherent loneliness of existence. The film opens when Yuichi Ishii, the real owner of this company, approaches Mahiro, a shy and silent 12-year-old girl, in Yoyogi Park, full of walkers, young people and tourists. Ishii tells her that he is her father, and that he left her after their divorce, since he has started another family. None of this is true, as Ishii has been hired by Mahiro's mother, to create the illusion that her father has not forgotten her, and has searched for her. The encounters happen frequently, both empathize and have fun together in moving scenes. Mahiro is gaining confidence, he becomes fond of who he thinks his father is, he makes confessions typical of a teenager, without realizing that for Ishii, she is simply the daughter of the client who has hired him. Available on MUBI.

A film that looks like a documentary that how we would like to lie to ourselves. It is so well set that you may don't feel it is a feature. Done on a 4K professional camera to get more closer to reality.

I watched it at the Cannes Film Festival in May. The family romance Yuichi Ishii, the main character doing mysterious work as a rental family, and a girl who thinks that family romance Yuichi Ishii is a real father, various requests jump into the family romance Yuichi Ishii story. The story of the family romance Yuichi Ishii who is tired of playing someone made the story interesting. Minor actor? I don't know, but I was impressed with the natural performance that I didn't decorate, matching the violin music and atmosphere of the movie.

Herzog never disappoints me and with FAMILY ROMANCE, LLC. i felt happy, moved and sad. I really felt them as real people and not actors. I think most movies needs this, this essence, this breath. I miss so much the characters now that the movie is over. I really want to watch it again. It's easily one of my favorite movies i've seen in all my life and i hugely recommend it. If you can get to watch HERZOG commentary about the film, do it. His words are pure wisdom. Teach you about Life and his advices are worth listening.

I wanted to like this movie. The story is great and asks some serious questions about how we "act" in our everyday lives. However, the movie is quite hard to watch with many incredibly awkward scenes. It also looks a bit homevideo-y and the script is a quite thin.

The Wind Phone is a phone booth in Japan which people use to hold conversations with their loved ones lost in the tsunami of 2011. Here Herzog puts a woman on a cliff facing the ocean and gives her a receiver. "Did you speak with someone dead?, they ask her after she hangs up. "No. I tried instead to reach someone alive", she answers and you immediately recognize your communication with the living is as one-way as this. The existential solitude of modern man is on focus in this fine drama telling the invented story of a very real company called Family Romance which rents out actors to fill the gaps in our interpersonal relations.

Werner Herzog explores the strange business of rented relatives in 'Family Romance, LLC' - a guerrilla-filmed Japanese drama about relationships, emotions, and the artificiality of it all. Fascinating ideas, but the poor scripting, stilted performances, and bad camerawork make the movie quite the chore to sit through.

The film is a bit slow in places and there are some boring bits, but the concept itself is interesting. A man has an company who rents substitutes for fathers, businessmen, etc. He begins forming a relationship with the daughter of a wealthy, Yuri Kagami-esque woman who is a divorced widow, by pretending to be her father. Unfortunately it goes against his own company policy. Will he tell Mahiro the truth or become her actual father? The last few minutes of the film are the best. There's a little bit of insight into Japanese racism, as Mahiro befriends a little girl for having dark skin. The photography is beautiful. The vistas of Tokyo are stunning. It's definitely worth watching.