Werner Herzog’s feature filmography can be cleaved into two halves: documentary and fiction. What’s more difficult is deciding into which of these categories each of his films belongs. His documentaries meddle and manufacture; his fiction captures moments of truth and acts of God. During the filming of Aguirre, the Wrath of God a flood beset the cast and crew, destroying rafts and sets constructed for the film. Without hesitation Herzog shot and incorporated the flood into the film’s story. Herzog works in liminal spaces, blurring the boundary between real and unreal. Family Romance, LLC. represents his purest habitation of these spaces so far.
In real life, Ishii Yuichi heads an infamous agency in Japan called Family Romance. The agency employs a roster of actors to fulfil vital roles in the lives of its clients. The bereaved and lonesome can resurrect dead family, conjure kinship as if from clay—signatories, guardians and friends wait a card payment away. Ishii serves Herzog’s film by playing himself. We follow fictionalised interactions with clients, colleagues and confidantes. The story is constructed. Its players are as real as you or I.
Family Romance, LLC. is more than a little reminiscent of Leos Carax’s Holy Motors. Ishii’s roleplaying fills vacuums in the lives of others, but we soon learn that he is something of a shell himself. Ishii is a “chameleon” splayed across conflicting roles with uncertain self-identity. In his line of work, neither party can submit to emotion. An illusion must be upheld and—ironically—clients must never receive the connection they’re paying for. Family Romance, LLC. explores a violation of this boundary. Ishii befriends a fatherless girl, Mahiro, at the behest of her mother. When he ultimately leaves, Mahiro loses a father for the second time.
The intent of Ishii’s real-life work is a lie which generates revelation. Many are taught: confront truths to heal and therapise. Ishii instead attacks truth’s monopoly. It’s likely Herzog found, in him, the kindred spirit of an artist. Herzog is an editor of images—a distorter of reality who once rejected the label “fly-on-the-wall” in favour of “hornet who stings”. Our own discomfort with Ishii’s theatre arises from its shattering of illusions; the obviousness of its construction reveals the ones we surround ourselves with.
Prayer is one such construction lensed in this film. Few pray expecting an answer—some pray without belief. But prayer allows us to conceptualise wishes, order priorities, and explore our needs in undisturbed silence. When we make wishes, the act of wish-making alone is enough. Conversely, if we admit the absurdity of the act it crumbles and becomes useless. In a deeper irony, sometimes these exact social constructions are what demand Ishii’s services. In the film a bride must be given away by her father, whose absence leaves the marriage ersatz and disrupted. One of Ishii’s employees thus fills the role to satisfy tradition.
In its form, Family Romance, LLC. is a replica of Ishii—a truth-seeking façade. Its presentation is in guerrilla-style with digital immediacy; a kind of new-vérité. Filmic warmth and intimacy freezes over in the face of its vloggy videography. We cannot ignore Herzog holding the camera, the camera itself. In one early POV shot Mahiro films the audience with her own iPhone. Through commitment to reality the untruth of Family Romance, LLC. is, paradoxically, heightened and emphasised.
Herzog also toys with his own mythology; his uncanny ability to magnetise to interesting real-life events. In Family Romance, LLC. we witness simulated feudal conflict, hara-kiri, and a practicing circus troupe in Yoyogi park. Birds surround Mahiro and land on her hands. A bystander, after taking a picture of Ishii and Mahiro together, launches into an impromptu mime show. Herzog’s filmic legacy is so indelible we take these displays as read—but it later transpires they were all written into the plot and staged.
Iconic imagery is also resurrected. In the same park, Mahiro animates a dancing Oni, coin-slotted in a case. A cheap arcade attraction, the demon jerks in a pitiful and robotic imitation of life. Later an elderly Japanese oracle tumbles in similarly weak movements across her floor. One recalls the chicken from Stroszek dancing for coins, the deaf-blind subjects of Land of Silence and Darkness, fed and sustained by those whose names they will never know. Ishii’s organisation serves a pathetic and troubling need. But it’s the symptom of something even more troubling: our plays at nobility which trap us, alone, in interior worlds which do not reflect reality. I suspect this is Herzog’s ultimate point: only when we abandon attempts to exist as anything but fumbling and ridiculous animals may we judge Ishii and the work of Family Romance.
Family Romance, LLC. is available for purchase through MUBI here.
Words: Andrew O’Keefe