a review of 家庭罗曼史有限公司

Although I was initially planning to watch Hamilton on Disney+ tonight, I remembered that I also had a free invitation from MUBI to see a virtual preview of the latest Werner Herzog feature, "Family Romance, LLC" which was only being made available for 24 hours, before presumably appearing on other platforms and maybe even theaters on some unknown future date. (EDIT 7/7: It's a new monthly selection on MUBI, and will be available for a few more weeks as of today.) The movie is an intriguing blend of documentary and fiction storytelling, about a Japanese company that specializes in renting out trained actors to serve as replacement family members or friends for various purposes, with the actual company's founder playing himself as the film's main character. I thought it was really excellent, and emotionally affecting in a way that I haven't ever seen in a Herzog film. (Speaking of Disney+, the MUBI presentation was followed by a brief Q&A with Herzog in which he shared his process and anecdotes from the making of the film. One of his stories included a brief digression about working with the Baby Yoda/The Child animatronic from his stint playing a baddie on The Mandalorian, in which he reiterated his fascination with how a machine could be made to produce such heartbreaking and soulful expressions, which not coincidentally is a major theme of this very film.)