FNC 2019: Family Romance LLC (2019)

Family Romance LLC (2019)

Director (and writer): Werner Herzog

Cast: Ishii Yuichi, Mahiro Tanimoto

A man is hired to impersonate the missing father of a young girl. – IMDB

How far would you go to create a certain feeling? Family Romance LLC is a company that finds professional actors to create a certain moment crafted to their needs whether its a stand-in husband at a ceremony or setting up a surprise moment to relive an experience or in this story’s central story, a father returning to know a daughter. It takes a look at how a person’s desire to escape loneliness and feel wanted or important can lead them to create these fictitious moments and where does it stop.

Family Romance LLC approaches its rather personal material in a well-rounded structure. It focuses on the main story which is a mother hiring a man Ishii (Ishii Yuichi) to be the father of her 12 year old daughter Mahiro (Mahiro Tanimoto) who has left them since she was 2 and the following outings this “father-daughter” go on to build their relationship while seeing how this man Ishii reports back to the mother. At the same time, it gives another side of the story of Family Romance LLC and that is the other types of services that it offers for other people in need which gives a broader extent of how far these services can go and the boundaries and limits and how it is run on other levels.

While that is the case, Family Romance LLC will at times feel disjointed as it jumps from one scene to the next whether in his main vein or the little cases of different people that approach Ishii hiring their different actors for their different emotional voids. At the same time, its hard to determine whether this is a documentary or a drama as the main cast are non-professional actors sharing the raw story based on “rentaru furendo”, an actual type of agency like Family Romance LLC that exists in Japan. Perhaps its because these actors, mostly focused on Mahiro and Ishii that makes this film feel ever more realistic and at times, see that their attachment does form and how it will end as father-daughter relationships is something that can be replicated not exactly an act that can be forever. Especially as these two, despite their awkward interactions growing slightly better by the end, do spike some connection to these people and wonder whether on any level these lies are better especially for the daughter who may have believed to have found her father again but to inevitably have to lose him at some point depending on how far this act can go.

Family Romance LLC is a tough film to watch. Its not for everyone especially in terms of pacing and it blurs that line between cinema and reality. It looks at the society and the emotional voids that individuals will have as well as how far they will go to replicate feelings, relive moments and create this fake sense of security or happiness and find their own bliss. However, it also emphasizes on the actor hired, Ishii Yuichi and as much as this is a business and he can’t love or be loved (something along those lines), emotions are part of being human and he has to know where to draw the lines, no matter how difficult and as subtle as those feelings are portrayed, those struggling moments add a lot to the film as Family Romance LLC shows many sides of the story. For this premise, which is hard to portray, director Werner Herzog makes the best of it and delivers a fairly immersive film that will make you ponder on how far the lonely society will go and how significant emotional voids are in life.

Family Romance LLC has another screening at Festival du Nouveau Cinema on October 19th at 9:20pm at Cineplex Odeon Quarter – Salle 10. You can find more info HERE.

Jack Reacher (2012)

For me, Tom Cruise went back on my radar after I saw M:I: Ghost Protocol.  I don’t think I reviewed that here yet but that movie was my turning point into believing that Tom Cruise still had it in him.  My tablet has this movie streaming app and they’ve been dishing out free rental vouchers so thats why you’ll see me posting ridiculous amount of movie reviews, because I can get it for free 🙂 I still have 2 more to go as I write this! The first one I chose was a newer selection, Jack Reacher!

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins, David Oyelowo, Werner Herzog, Jai Courtney, Joseph Sikora, Robert Duvall

On a normal morning, five strangers are shot dead with six shots by a sniper in the opposite parking lot.  The police come in and with all the forensics and evidence, they pinpoint James Barr (Joseph Sikora) to be the obvious suspect.  Only Barr says he’s innocent and asks to Get Jack Reacher.  Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) is an ex-military investigator who has become a long-time drifter that has fell off the map.  Before they knew it, Jack Reacher comes to the police department to find them and he sees all the mistakes that the crime scene consists of.  He digs with the help of the District Attorney’s (Richard Jenkins) daughter, Helen (Rosamund Pike) who is a young defense attorney appointed to help Barr.  As more leads are found, the situation becomes more dangerous and he knows that there is more people involved and someone deadly at the end pulling the strings.

Jack Reacher is a pretty decent crime thriller.  For the most part, I was really intrigued by the story.  It was a bit predictable even without having read the source material.  In fact, I’ve never read any of Lee Child’s novels before but I saw a part of the “twist” long before it happened.  Even with that, the whole analysis and setup of the elaborate crime under investigation was quite detailed and intriguing and kept me wondering or even doubting my initial suspicions throughout the movie.

Tom Cruise does a pretty awesome job as Jack Reacher.  He’s a drifter who really has nothing to lose.  He’s agile when he fist fights and he will do whatever it takes to get himself the information he needs. This gives him the advantage over those in the system.  We see that he is very skilled at what he does and that even though his purpose of going there was as agreed with Barr to get rid of him, he still was able to be objective. The character design of Jack Reacher is definitely an impressive one.

The main female lead is played by Rosamund Pike as an attorney defending Barr. I loved Rosamund Pike in Pride and Prejudice. She’s so elegant and strong all in one person and she always plays roles that has that style. At least this role was similar also in its own way.  In Jack Reacher, she’s asks for a lot of reasoning especially regarding what Jack Reacher does and whenever he asks her to find certain information.  Their chemistry was good in the way that they worked together but at the same time there were trust issues and some challenging each other as they were trying to figure out the investigation.

The only problem with this movie was the ending and the villain: the guy that whipped up this whole thing.  It felt like its like it got tired and went “Okay, its too long. Let’s stop it right here and leave the rest for the audience to fill in the blanks”.  Till that very end, the reasoning behind why the villain did all this left me all full of question marks floating around my head.  Maybe I missed something during the movie since I did watch it bit by bit throughout 24 hours. I just wasn’t satisfied with the ending in general.  To me, it just felt a bit incomplete.

Other than a poorly constructed villain and ending, this is a pretty decent thriller.  The whole setup of the plot leading up to the ending and its outstanding cast led by Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike was great.  Regardless, it is worth a watch, at the very least, you shouldn’t feel like it wasted your time.

Maybe its time to check out Lee Child’s novel and maybe it’ll give me some closure 😉

 What do you think about Tom Cruise? Do you have a favorite role that he’s done? Did you see Jack Reacher? What did you think about it? Did you read the book this was based on?