YARDS OF GRAPEVINE | Movies, TV, Oscars & S'more

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

It’s nothing new for a documentary or another form of nonfiction to play on an observer’s perception of truth as way to increase the engagement of a complex story. In some ways, every piece of supposed truth asks us to question the meaning of objectivity. However, F for Fake, Exit Through the Gift Shop, A Million Little Pieces, and even Fargo, are all striking examples of the kinds of social controversy and layered documentary approaches that can emerge from playing with perception. A con game seems like a perfect mirror for the documentary form since creating a false truth is the nature of these kinds of works. Rarely, however, do films take on con men of such deep emotional complexities as Bart Layton’s film, The Imposter.  At once disgusting and magnetizing, the film at times struggles because of how adamantly it straddles the line between emotional character study and suspenseful ploy with difficult to believe twists.

Three years after a San Antonio boy named Nicholas Barclay goes missing, his family gets a call saying that he might have been found in Spain. Eager to believe their son has resurfaced, the family accepts notorious French imposter, Frédéric Bourdin (dubbed The Chameleon by French press), as their own. As state officials dig deeper into the case, they slowly discover that the imposter can’t possibly be Nicholas. Even after revealing their finds, officials are surprised to learn of the family’s lack of willingness to accept Frédéric as a fake. In its last act, the film takes a strange turn that unveils the family may have known of Frédéric’s ruse from the beginning, seeing his presence as a way to cover up vicious crimes of their own.

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