The Imposter

Sometimes life truly is stranger than fiction. In 1994, thirteen year old Nicholas Barclay went missing from his hometown after a game of basketball with his friends. Despite the best efforts of his family to locate him, the boy was never found. Fast forward to 1997 and the Barclays receive a phone call from the US Embassy in Spain. The local authorities seem to have found an orphaned teenager holed up in a phone box and he claims to be Nicholas.

Except it is not Nicholas Barclay, but a conniving impersonator named Frederic Bourdin, a thickly-accented Frenchman who is all too happy to narrate straight to the camera how he tricked a family into believing he was their long lost son from San Antonio, Texas.

Bart Layton’s documentary is a film that catches you entirely off guard. One could read the synopsis above and would be entirely justified to believe the reviewer in question has spoiled the ending with the kind of big reveal any other film would save for the third act. And yet within minutes of the film’s dark opening, you will soon realize that, like its protagonist, there is so much more to The Imposter.

Take Bourdin, for example: here is a man who should be so easy to hold in contempt, despise even, yet somehow comes off as a compelling raconteur, not to mention an unsettlingly charming one too. He is far from self-loathing but he doesn’t sugarcoat his story either, which as a result comes off, bizarrely, as honest and heartfelt.

The reconstructed footage will initially put off those who like their documentaries authentic and void of melodrama, but their inclusion is strategic. By having actors reenact the scenarios that were impossible to capture on camera, the real life footage packs a far more powerful punch, whether they are excerpts from Fox News or the tender clips taken by the real Nicholas Barclay before his disappearance.

The Imposter is also clearly not afraid of pushing buttons. Layton’s decision to play interviews with the lackluster Barclay clan against Bourdin’s more colourful account dares viewers to be put in the unlikely position of sympathizing more with the conman than the conned, a move which Michael Moore would never dream of pulling off in one of his features.

And then there’s the twist, the one that creeps up on you in the final act, after an hour of conflicting theories and half-spoken truths and that will have you looking up more info online once the credits start rolling. To reveal more would mean missing out on viewing and subsequently analyzing a brilliant film that sustains there is never one truth and that ultimately, some stories are too crazy even for Hollywood.   

5/5