The need for connection lingers in every human heart. Marriages and friendships both stem from the inherent desire to connect with another person, but no other relationship affects the human experience more than family. Mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters—you are born into the aforementioned roles without a choice and required to coexist in some capacity. Even in cases of neglect, abandonment, or adoption, the deprivation of a traditional familial unit affects the individual due to absence or misuse, which frequently leads to a unique sense of loneliness or an endless search for affirmation.
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Similarly, a sentiment of disconnected loneliness haunts every frame of “Family Romance, LLC,” a drama that blends documentary reality with cinematic fiction. As the director of certified classics (“Aguirre, the Wrath of God”), acclaimed documentaries (“Grizzly Man”), and quasi-sequels (“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”), Werner Herzog directing an impromptu feature about Japan’s “rent-a-family” industry finds the filmmaker falling in line with his trademark inclination to tell any story he deems worthy, no matter how random it might be.
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In the case of “Family Romance, LLC,” Herzog hones in on Yuichi Ishii who—both within the context of the film and real-life—works for Family Romance, a company that specializes in posing as family members and friends for people willing to pay a price. Ishii works behind the scenes and acquires his own clients with an equivalent dissociation between his work and his personal life; when working for Family Romance, you do not mix business with pleasure. No form of genuine connection is allowed. And yet, Ishii finds himself questioning the sanctity of his work when he begins to pose as the absent father of Mahiro. As Ishii dedicates more time to the guise of the father role, the genuinely parental experience forces the man to confront the ethics of his profession.
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Due to Herzog’s blend of documentarian storytelling and (seemingly) improvised narrative, “Family Romance, LLC” imparts an emotive tactility, the acute sensation of seeing reality unfold in real-time without the constraint of scripted events. Every element of the film feels unpolished; notably, “Family Romance” marks Herzog’s first cinematographer credit in the director’s decade-long career. Resultingly, the effects of the imperfections on display fluctuate between endearing and distracting.
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“Family Romance, LLC” brims with a clear passion for the subject matter and an empathetic yearning to capture the story in its rawest form. Undoubtedly, the burgeoning pseudo-father-and-daughter relationship between Ishii and Mahiro provides the core emotional undercurrent and primarily propels the plot, as minor and easily distracted as it might be. Combining Ishii’s candid performance with Herzog’s palpable zeal catalyzes a reaction that irradiates a charm guaranteed to warm the hearts of those searching for a film that speaks to the necessity for human connection.
Nevertheless, most of the film’s unrefined traits come across as sloppy and misguided, on a stylistic and storytelling level equally. Thematically, “Family Romance, LLC” wears its messages on its sleeve. On the whole, the film commentates on the escalating disconnect between people in an age of burgeoning automation and prevalent self-interest, a culture that promotes exteriorized personas as a representation of internalized traits and experiences. As the audience ventures through vignettes of broken families, lonely women and aspiring internet celebrities, Herzog poses a question to his viewers: As the idolization of social currency such as fame, status and reputation overtake the influence of personal characteristics like sincerity, authenticity, and intimacy, what will be the result in the years to come?
The answer remains ambiguous, but the director’s methods of conveying this inquiry, which involves brazen un-subtlety and overt critiques of capitalism, deprives the emotional resonance that “Family Romance, LLC” requires. Crafting a film packing such a stripped-back caliber demands either innovation or delicacy, but “Family Romance, LLC” is neither elegant nor novel—it is a well-intentioned, albeit amateurish sketch of half-formed ideas and sporadically intriguing concepts.
As “Family Romance” nears its conclusion, Ishii visits a hotel filled with automatons. Blank-faced androids work behind the desk. Robotic fish swim around in an aquarium. And Ishii, a man hired by brokenhearted people to lie, watches—disimpassioned and melancholy. It is a bleak scene marked by silence and equipped with a haunting forecast for the future of humanity. In the end, only time will tell whether “Family Romance, LLC” is a respectable misfire in Herzog’s filmography or a prophetic vision ahead of its time. [C]
“Family Romance, LCC” is available to stream for free, for 24 hours, today on Mubi.
