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Rating: 6.5 stars

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All movies seen on 07/03/2020

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Family Romance, LLC (2019)

Directed by Werner Herzog

Drama

Overview

Love is a business at Family Romance, a company that rents human stand-ins for any occasion. Founder Yuichi Ishii helps make his clients’ dreams come true. But when the mother of 12-year-old Mahiro hires Ishii to impersonate her missing father, the line between acting and reality threatens to blur.

Length 110 minutes

Actors

Yuichi Ishii | Mahiro Tanimoto | Miki Fujimaki | Takashi Nakatani | Yuka Watanabe | Jin Kuroinu | Airi Coats | Shun Ishigaki | Tatsuaki Hôjô | Tetsuro Mori | Ryoko Sugimachi | Airi Asoh | Yuki Wakabayashi | Umetani Hideyasu | Iwamoto Eisuke | Take Nakamura | Yuika Koide | Sumire Nagai | Ryosuke Nakanishi | Mayu Nakamura | Makoto Sasaki | Seiji Inoue | Kazushige Nishida | Hideyuki Suzawa | Miki Takafumi | Daiki Ishida | Shun Hishikawa | Kazuya Ichino | Teru Itashiki | Yuta Kato | Mio Hinata | Ryota Hashimoto | Soutaro Tsuji | Kiju Kitamura | Yuki Masai | Urara Fujishiro | Mai Suzuki | Kumi Manda

Viewing History (seen 1 time)

Viewing Notes

Werner Herzog shoots a film in Japan… I just wrote about this concept in my notes for WAFFLE: hiring ppl to be your friend or companion or whatever. It’s a real thing in Japan.

So overall I like this movie. It captures a lot of what Tokyo is, a sea of gray buildings with these small corners of color and beauty. There’s a scene shot in Kabukicho, the Red Light district in Shinjuku. That street (or walkway I guess) I’ve walked up and down so many times. It’s still so bizarre to me that they built the Hotel Gracery (Godzilla hotel) right in the middle of the Red Light district.

Herzog really teeters on making an impactful film about hiring or renting someone to be someone else and just making a highlight reel of wacky Japan. However, since there are still so many [wacky Japan] things he didn’t touch on I give him a small pass even tho the parade of wacky Japan bits gets so tiresome from non-Japanese filmmakers. Herzog said in his Q&A that he wanted to include the robot hotel and robot fish b/c he was fascinated by it. Of course. That’s a wacky Japan bit. The entire scene is unnecessary. Having the main character who’s portraying a fake father look intently at the fake fish for a couple beats is so on the nose I got a little embarrassed for Herzog.

What’s good here is the core story about the man from Family Romance, a legit real business in Tokyo, pretending to be the father to the girl and the whole thing getting more intense each passing week. Plus the sitch w/her mother. That’s good stuff.

I’d probably view this again b/c Tokyo really does look wonderful and exactly I’ve experienced it. Herzog mentioned how he shot this w/o the permits in Tokyo like it was no big deal and yes that is how filmmakers do it in Japan.

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