Today's Mini-review: The Imposter

The Imposter: ***/*****, or 6/10

Semi-documentary centered around the unbelievable case of a French con man who posed as a missing American boy and almost got away with it. 13 year old Nick Barclay disappears in Texas in 1994, seemingly reappears a few years later in Spain, but looks nothing like the original (natural ageing not withstanding). Yet on return in the States, he is hailed by “his” family as the actual missing child, until the web of lies on both sides just can't do anything but unravel completely. The imposter is outed as a French swindler who has been passing himself off as missing children before, despite being in his late twenties. The real questions the film then tries to answer revolves around the ease with which the family accepted the con man. As their preferred explanation, the filmmakers suggest the possibility someone in the family was involved with Nick's supposed death, which his relatives tried to cover up. No hard evidence for this theory is presented though. The film consists of interviews with the various parties involved, intercut with re-enactments of what they claim transpired. This movie in a lot of ways emulates the mischievous protagonist himself, posing as a documentary and even being accepted as such, while obviously heavily fictionalized. Still, in many instances it's quite unclear where the truth ends and the fiction begins. This could have made for a more intriguing film were it not for its overreliance on talking heads, which soon gets tedious (especially when they repeat themselves). The failure to account for what really happened to poor little Nick also makes for a frustrating ending: though this cannot be contributed to the filmmakers, their emphasis on their own speculation regarding Nick's death at the hands of his family, which is investigated quite thoroughly near the end of the film and then briskly discarded as a mere theory, also makes for an unsatisfying climax. This film undeniably applies an interesting format to tell its incredible story, but the number of narrative lies employed to make it more tense end up doing some injustice to its contents.