Family Romance, LLC
Dir. Werner Herzog / Dur. 89 mins / Country. USA
Festival Strand:- Create
In A Nutshell:- Fictionalised recreations of real events following the staff of Family Romance, LLC; a company which offers friends and relatives for hire.
The Good:- It definitely has a distinctive feel - the cast are non-professional actors, all speaking their native Japanese. There’s an oddly heightened feel to it by having essentially play themselves in recreations of the sort of real life events that Family Romance, LLC caters for - whether that be hiring someone to play your father as you are ashamed of your actual alcoholic father or attempting to recreate the feeling of a lottery win by being surprised with further fake wins. There are some nicely amusing moments and main “actor” Yuichi Ishii clearly has some acting ability given that his day job is hiring himself out to professionally pretend.
The Bad:- The whole thing feels a little thin and stretched out. It doesn’t seem like there;s enough there to sustain the ninety minute running time. While Herzog definitely has an eye for the interesting and the quirky, this feels somewhat slight by his standards
The Verdict:- There are some nicely amusing and touching moments in this oddly heightened docudrama and the non-professional cast all have a sense of charm about them that helps carry things through but this feels like a somewhat disposable effort from Herzog.
The Venue / Intro / Q&A:- Back at the Prince Charles for this one but no intro or Q&A for it.
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