THE IMPOSTER

Until the last five minutes Bart Layton's The Imposter had me firmly in it's grasp. This riveting true crime doc tells the story of Frédéric Bourdin, a Franco-Spaniard con artist who in 1998 successfully passed himself of as Nicolas Barclay, a young boy who had gone missing in San Antonio several years earlier.

It's a difficult deception to pull off. Frédéric is a 23 year old brunet, Nicolas would be a 15 year old bond with tattoo's. Somehow he pulls it off. Whenever Nicolas's family or the authorities has a suspicion, Frédéric finds some slick answer. Even then it's hard to believe that the family buy's it. The film has some suspicions but it appears that their need to believe really was that strong.

What's interesting is that while the film features interviews from most of the particulars, it focuses on Bourdin and ends up being narrated largely by him, making this a documentary in the loosest sense of the term and the film is conscious of that. Stylistically, Layton wants us to know right away that something is off, that this film exists partially in "Movie-land." First off, the image uses the 2.35:1 aspect ratio we associate more with thrillers and action epics than docs. The film uses music interestingly, at one point the narration literally fades away so we can have a sequence centered around a David Bowie song. The talking head interviews are professionally composed with a photographers eye that emphasis the stageiness of the whole thing. Then there's the reenactments.

Reenactments are tricky. As an audience we know that they're an unreal vision of real events, but presented in documentary context we subconsciously trust them. The best ones present themselves as sportive illustrations rather than unassailable truth. But the reenactments in Imposter go far beyond that and become full blown sequences owing more to Alfred Hitchcock than Errol Morris. As if to drive home the unreliability of the film, Layton sometimes uses an actor as Bourdin, but sometimes slyly inserts Bourdin himself into them and has him narrate within them (a la Farris Beuler).

The idea of the intentionally unreliable documentary is nothing new, Catfish and Exit Through The Gift Shop being recent notable examples. None of them do it quite as amazingly as Orison Well's F for Fake. Layton's effort is no slouch. It's best viewed less as a documentary and more as a thriller that happens to have real people in it.

As a thriller it's excellently staged and told. Bourdin's actions are deporible, but he's such an effective narrator that you almost begin to admire the skill it took to pull this thing off for as long as he did. I'm reminded James M. Cain's novel Double Indemmity which speaks of the outrageous audacity required to pull off a masterful crime. Bourdin has that audacity as does Layton in his telling of the story.

It doesn't all work. The film builds wonderfully only to unravel in the final sequence by indulging in a journalistic stunt more suited to Geraldo Rivera than an ambitious art doc. It's a gripping thriller, but by the end even Layton forgets that there is a real tragedy in here that needs a certain amount of respect.

Grade: B-

Note: The Imposter is currently streaming on Netflix Instant