El impostor

Considered a dead-cert win at the Academy Awards next year, Bart Layton's documentary The Imposter has rapidly generated a great deal of notoriety and acclaim. The quintessential 'stranger than fiction' tale, it's sensational blend of archive footage, delicate reconstructions and heartrending talking head interviews illustrate that, not only is Layton a masterful, investigative reporter, but moreover a profoundly impressive storyteller.

Back in 1994, the blue-collar Barclay family from San Antonio, Texas, was left distraught after the disappearance of their 13-year-old son, Nicholas. Like any teenage boy, Nicholas was a cocksure kid, filled with energy, love for his family, and certainly wouldn't runaway from home for no good reason. Weeks turned into months, and eventually the case was abandoned by the police and press. Three years later, the local Texas police department receives an international call from Spain. On the receiving end is a character claiming to be Nicholas. Putting in a bogus story about how he escaped the clutches of a drug fuelled, pedophilic organization, the police think his story check out, and soon enough Nicholas' sister Carey jets over to Europe to meet her long lost brother. In front of police officials, she takes a good look and identifies him as the legitimate lost brother. Three years ago, Nicholas was a blue-eyed, spunky American teenager, now he's transformed into a dark haired, brown-eyed man with stubble and an irreplaceable French accent.

The Imposter, like it's central subject, is not the documentary you expect it to be. With many twists, contortions and moral judgements, your pretty much open-mouth and on the edge of your seat throughout the film's entirety. That's partly down to Layton's craft, particularly the Errol Morris-like interviewing technique – which sees people gaze directly into the lens of the camera and, vicariously, straight at us. But, even more astounding, is the capricious performer that names the film. Frédéric Bourdin, a then 23-year-old man of French-Algerian descent, is actively impersonating Nicholas the whole time, convincing not only the state officials, but the abandoned boy's own mother. With a shrouded history as a homeless orphan thrown into the life of deception and petty crime, he longed to fit in and have a family of his own. When that opportunity didn't surface, he decided to steal Nicholas's own.

"How could he get away with it?" I hear you cry. That's something I'll leave for you to answer when you see this documentary. Suffice to say, Bourdin is an intimidatingly convincing, intelligent and charismatic figure. To the point where we sit back and reflect whether we could have been swung by his quick wit. Even if Bourdin is the great pretender, a new revelation in the film's final act suggests that the Barclay family are perhaps keeping up appearances of their own.

It may not be my favourite documentary of the year (The Act of Killing, if you were wondering), but The Imposter is the best psychological thriller I've seen in recent memory. It transcends the documentary stratum. A dauntingly universal account of a missing child and false identity, it's stupefying moments will leave you silenced whilst the movie plays out. But, as soon as the credits roll, you'll be talking about this exceptional movie for years to come.

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'The Imposter (2012)' is one of those movies that you really need to see to believe. As such, I'll try my very best to avoid spoiling even its most basic story beats. Still, I'd advise not reading further if you intend on watching the piece, which I highly recommend you do, because it feels as though the less you know, the more potent the experience will be. That said, the documentary tells an almost unbelievable tale that kicks off with a missing child and only gets stranger and sadder from there. It's very forthcoming with its first major twist, opting to reveal the nature of its eponymous imposter surprisingly early. Rather than use it for a shock later down the line, it uses it to drown the entire affair in dramatic irony. This choice transforms the piece from focusing on what its central con is, to how that con was even successful in the first place. It allows the flick to ruminate on some interesting themes of deception, perception and ignorance. It's never as straightforward as you think and it still provides plenty of powerful twists and turns, despite the fact that what could have been its most major one is - as I mentioned - laid bare almost as soon as the thing starts. The film plays out a bit like the con it retells, allowing some of its subjects to manipulate the audience just as they manipulated people in real life. For the most part, it remains neutral and allows its viewers to make up their own minds. Because of the ever-shifting nature of the story, that isn't as simple as it would first seem. You're likely to be turning the plot over in your mind long after the inevitability unsatisfying conclusion has been and gone. The piece does end on a pretty damning statement from its eponymous trickster, which almost solidifies its (or, rather, its makers') true feelings towards its subject matter and yet doesn't feel like a betrayal of the flick's otherwise distant approach. The film really is captivating. It's actually, if you'll pardon the cliché, stranger than fiction; if it were a traditional film, you'd accuse its plot of being too unbelievable. It's an entertaining and well-executed documentary that makes excellent use of surprisingly formalistic recreations and effectively candid 'talking head' segments. At the end of the day, it portrays a really sad situation and it doesn't even pretend to provide an answer to the most burning question it raises. It's an accomplished piece of work. 7/10.

Stranger than fiction true-life documentary of the opportunistic and heartless identity-theft by a mature 23 year old French nationality homeless man who, after being picked up on the street in Limares, Spain assumed the identity of a young boy who had disappeared three years ago aged 13 from his home in Texas.

The perpetrator, one Frederic Bourdin, randomly picked his new identity from a file of international missing persons whilst in police custody, although you would think he could have done a better job of it as he was at the time six years older than the boy Nicholas Barclay he chose to impersonate, had a different hair colour and spoke with a pronounced accent, never mind being separated by the Atlantic Ocean, but preying on a family elated at the prospect of the miraculous reappearance of their long lost son, he ran the whole nine yards in the role before finally a doctor's testimony put a stop to the charade and eventually saw Bourdin go to jail, leaving behind a family now heartbroken a second time and a host of incredulous officials duped by his brazen callowness.

Like a dark version of the Emperor's New Clothes, this is a story of a desperate family seeing what wasn't there and believing the impossible through the blinding distortion of their individual and collective grief. It all really starts with the boy's sister who flies to Spain and immediately falls for her long-lost brother's incredible return from the dead, swallowing whole his explanations for his changes of appearance, voice and character. Bourdin, now spying a life of ease in America as the pampered born-again son, had decided to follow through with the ruse, dying his hair blond, adding a few tattoos and concocting a fantastical story of being kidnapped and transported abroad to a life as a sex-slave with the so-called gang even managing to conveniently change his eye-colour in the process.

There's no question of the film-maker here attempting some is-he-or-isn't-he mystery, as the film's title makes clear, confirmed by Bourdin's first smirking, unrepentant appearance. The key events in the fraud are recreated dramatically and interspersed with interviews of all the major players in this unbelievable story set to a deliberately light, capering musical soundtrack which itself from the first strongly hints at the elusiveness and illusion at the heart of this incredible story.

In the end Bourdin got jailed for six years, the missing boy's hapless family saw their hopes of his resurrection brutally dashed and of course, his abduction and likely murder returned to the files of the unexplained and unsolved.

I came away from the film with a sense of how the power of loss, especially that of a child, can so blind a family which had given up hope and a sense of rage at the heartless selfishness of a still apparently unapologetic sick individual who even today diverts blame back to the trusting family who took him in.

Pity help the wife and three children the film tells us in an epilogue he lives with today.

I watched a documentary the other day where the access was so good and the story so engaging that I had to check the thing was not a scripted drama; with The Imposter I had a similar feeling and had only just finished it when I took to the internet to verify that the whole story was not made up. I confirmed that this was not the case and in fairness if you tried to write this story as fiction, nobody would buy it as too much of it would be laughed out of the room as absurd or so unlikely as to be impossible. I shan't say too much but essentially this is the story of a Frenchman in his early 20's who is in Spain and claims to be a boy who went missing a few years earlier as a 13 or 14 year old in San Antonio, Texas. Despite being older, having a French accent, not having the same color eyes or hair, his claim sees the missing boy's sister coming across to Europe, greeting him with open arms and returning him to his home in the US. And it should tell you a lot that this is where the story really starts.

As a story it is hard to believe and on this level it is engaging because it is so fantastical that you cannot stop following it but it still needs to be delivered well – just because you have a good story doesn't make you a good story-teller. In this case though the film does a great job from start to finish. Interviews, reconstructions and archive footage are all used very well to slowly build the story and follow it to the conclusion. It is filmed in a very cinematic way, with effects of thrillers and a sinister air to it that I thought might be a bit forced but actually worked very well indeed – the cinematography of the reconstructions and the clever editing of the interviews into the film really worked to the film's benefit. The contributors are mostly engaging and quite open – in particular "The Imposter" himself is a real presence in the film, we may not really understand him (or any of them really) but his contributions really helps us get inside the story.

That the Imposter is a great story is one thing, but this film tells it very well indeed. It has weaknesses when it comes to understanding the characters but the thriller-approach works and drives the story forward in a manner that is satisfying and engaging. Excellent documentary.

Good, respectfully made documentaries are very difficult to rate, and even more difficult to review! This is what I experience once again after watching Bart Leyton's uniquely jaw-dropping "The Imposter". It would have been so much easier if this were a fictional story… Then we would all be able to write that it's a bunch of implausible and far-fetched nonsense that sprung from the mind of an overly imaginative scriptwriter! But this is a true story and – believe me – incredibly hard to fathom! Leyton reconstructs, chronologically and patiently, the story of an unscrupulous French/Algerian fraud who incomprehensibly manages to impersonate a vanished 16-year-old Texan; misleading the boy's devastated family members as well as the authorities and the media. When apprehended in Spain, Frédéric Bourdin sees the opportunity to assume the identity of Nicholas Barclay, who disappeared without a trace in his hometown of San Antonio 3 years and 4 months ago. There's no way back when Nicholas' sister comes to bring him back to Texas, but even though he looks, sounds and acts completely different than Nicholas ever did, the family embraces Bourdin without questioning his grotesque made up testimonies. Only gradually, some people become skeptical and begin to dig a deeper in Bourdin's persona, like a social worker and a private detective. The most praiseworthy aspect about "The Imposter", and I believe this is entirely Bart Leyton's very own accomplishment, is that this documentary isn't manipulative or judgmental at all. The film doesn't condemn the family members for their blindness, naivety or how easily they were brainwashed. Quite important, because this made me – personally - feel less like a voyeur in observing all the pain these people had to endure. Bourdin himself is also even granted to elaborate on his miserable childhood and his urge to compensate through becoming a phony. Leyton's narrative style is captivating and honest, and you hardly even notice the whole thing gradually turning from documentary into a tense thriller/film-noir. "The Imposter" is something you just have to discover yourself, I can only repeat that it's an incredible story that you don't even fully when you are gazing at it.