Yuichi Ishii runs a rental family service called Family Romance, offering clients the chance to hire people to act as their spouses, friends or family. He and his stable of actors fill the gaps in lonely people's lives. One day, Ishii is contracted to act as the father of a girl named Mahiro. The two become close, though Ishii begins to doubt his own reality, and his profession: to quote Werner Herzog: "the paradoxical situation is that although everything is performance, everything is a lie, everything is fabricated and acted, there is one thing always authentic, and that's emotions."

Herzog's 'Family Romance, LLC' is a moving drama, treading the line between feature film and documentary. Shot by Herzog himself, using a handheld camera, the film postulates that performance, artifice, is rife in society, that we are but, to paraphrase Shakespeare, "poor players strutting and fretting our hours upon the stage."

For many years, Herzog has spoken of "ecstatic truth," by which he means a storyteller, through fabrication, can reach a deeper, transcendent level of truth, going beyond mere factual accuracy. Essentially, it's a truth transcending the mundane, reaching into the mysterious, elusive realms of imagination and stylization. In other words, a lie that reveals truth, that is more authentic than reality itself. This is an undercurrent in 'Family Romance, LLC,' forming the foundation of Ishii and Mahiro's relationship.

To quote Herzog, "the girl lies to her 'father', who lies to be her father. She's lying to him as well, but her emotions for him are authentic." Weaves of ecstatic truth run throughout the tapestry of the film, as does the notion that we are all performers. This is heightened by the casting of Ishii as himself, as he, in reality, really runs a company called Family Romance, which actually provide the services mentioned above.

Throughout the film, Herzog invites viewers to question the veracity of our experiences, comparing us to robotic fish in a tank; endlessly swimming in an inescapable compound. Further, he highlights the loneliness of many in contemporary Japan, a land bustling with people where many feel isolated and alone.

According to CNN, "across Japan, nearly 1.5 million people have withdrawn from society, leading reclusive lives largely confined within the walls of their home... These are Japan's hikikomori, or shut-ins, defined by the government as people who have been isolated for at least six months." Japan faces an isolation crisis, and Herzog's film shows how Ishii's company breaks the dark spell of loneliness, how, in the words of Ishii, they "create illusions to make the lives of (their) clients better."

It makes for poignant drama. Watching young Mahiro form a relationship with a man she assumes to be her real father, and knowing that their relationship cannot last, is devastating. There is an improvisational, informal feeling to the film, so one really believes in their relationship, and is invested in their characters. While there are moments of humour throughout- such as when a mime performs a brilliant routine with a mobile phone- it is primarily a touching film, exposing deep truths, tugging at the heartstrings.

The film also shows other cases Ishii works on, such as a lottery winner who wants to re-experience the high of the win, or a man who wants someone else to take credit for a mistake he made at a train station. These are generally more comedic in tone, though no less believable, adding to Herzog's authentic depiction of life in Japan.

Herzog's handheld cinematography contributes to the film's realistic feeling. It is intimate, getting in close to the characters. Viewers feel like voyeurs, peeking into the lives of Ishii and Mahiro. At times, the visuals take on a dreamlike aspect, making Japan feel unreal, like a figment of the imagination. Ernst Reijseger's elegiac score adds to this feeling of unreality, complementing Herzog's imagery, while his and Sean Scannell's editing is astute. Reportedly, Herzog captured over 300 hours of film with Ishii; to cut it down to a coherent 90 minutes is an effort deserving applause.

As are the performances from the cast, all of whom are not primarily actors, and most of whom had not acted before, and have not done since. Yuichi Ishii, as a version of himself, is terrific. He has an inherent emotional intelligence and decency, which is evident on screen, making him a compelling character. Mahiro Tanimoto, playing Mahiro, is similarly excellent. A natural actress, she brings a vulnerability to the part that is most affecting, and is never anything less than believable. Her relationship with Ishii feels remarkably real, and they work wonderfully together. In addition, Miki Fujimaki does strong work as Mahiro's mother, and the rest of the amateur cast cannot be faulted.

Werner Herzog's 'Family Romance, LLC' blurs the line between fact and fiction, as his films often do. A touching, heartbreaking drama, it movingly examines human nature, loneliness and interpersonal relationships. It also ponders the meaning of truth, and how performance impacts our daily lives. Featuring striking cinematography and a powerful score, and led by two remarkably real performances from Yuichi Ishii and Mahiro Tanimoto, it is- much like its director- original, fascinating and unique.

Herzog goes full Orientalist in this dismal, stilted look at an obscure element of Japanese society. The first thing to know about renting out people to impersonate family members is that the concept is as bizarre and alien to the vast majority of Japanese as it is to Westerners. This story doesn't say anything about "the Japanese" or "Japanese society." It does say a lot about Western filmmakers and audiences who want to represent Japan as some exotic and unfathomable 'other.'

Ishii Yuichi is CEO of Family Romance, a company that loans out amateur actors to play family members. For example, a young woman is having her wedding but cannot invite her alcoholic father for fear that he will wreck the event. Instead, she turns to Family Romance and hires a man to play Dad and help her save face.

This story strand is plausible, and the idea of family roles as performative is certainly one rich with potential. The Japanese refer to their spouses as 'Mama' and 'Papa' even when the children aren't around, so the Japanese aspect of family role as performance is one worth highlighting. Herzog, however, isn't interested in that, and instead sacrifices story in order to shoe-horn into the frame everything weird and artificial he finds on his Japanese sojourn. Robot receptionists in a hotel? Let's accommodate them in a bizarre tangent to the story. Young people practicing samurai swordplay in a park? Let's have our main characters stare at them for an interminably long time. An actual oracle? We can shove our main character on a train to go and meet her for no narrative reason at all. A train employee employing someone else to apologize to his boss on a public platform? Hell, it would never happen, but let's shoot such a scene anyway because my lead prostrating himself on the platform looks so cool and weird.

If you have Japanese friends, ask them if they have hired someone to play a family member, or checked into a hotel staffed by robots, or been to a hedgehog cafe, or kept a robot fish in a fish tank, or traveled half the country to talk to an oracle. Or maybe don't ask them, if you want to stay friends.

Decorating your frame with Japan and the Japanese simply as 'exotic other' is bad enough, but Herzog also casts the actual CEO of Family Romance as his lead. Ishii Yuichi can't act. The poor amateur is out of his depth and his improvisation is just cringe-worthy. He has one facial expression the whole movie - tense. Herzog says he did not need translation as he could sense when a moment was 'authentic.' Sorry Werner, but you really couldn't.

It seems the other actors came from Ishii's company, which explains why they are just as wooden. The mother of Mahiro, the young girl who Ishii pretends to be a father to, is one-note. Only Mahiro looks to have any depth and complexity. Herzog's process seems to have been to make up the scenes on the hoof, then get the actors to improvise on location. The sets are bare and look like show-rooms rather than lived in spaces, and characters sit at awkward angles to each other to accommodate the straight-on camera. There is no thought for framing or composition. The whole effect is one of a glorified home video.

The final shot, a child in blur against frosted glass, is an apt closure to the thematic concern. So three stars for that shot, but three stars is generous, given the blithe disregard for the society and culture depicted.

Werner Herzog explores the strange business of rented relatives in 'Family Romance, LLC' - a guerrilla-filmed Japanese drama about relationships, emotions, and the artificiality of it all. Fascinating ideas, but the poor scripting, stilted performances, and bad camerawork make the movie quite the chore to sit through.