Review of The Imposter (2012) by Walter M — 20 Mar 2014

"The Imposter" is a suspenseful, multi-leveled and twist-filled documentary about 13-year old Nicholas Barclay who is found 3 years after having disappeared from San Antonio in Spain and is soon after reunited with his family. Except...

It is not Nicholas. It is Frederic, a 23 year-old con man.(Actually, his name is not revealed until late in the documentary but really it's not a big deal.) At the start, he pretends to be a teenager to get into a group home where at least at first he will not be identified and sent to prison. But with the threat of being fingerprinted hanging over him, he hatches a scheme to pretend to be a lost teenager from America. And then it turns out he may have outsmarted himself when Nicholas' sister arrives from America.

In the stranger than fiction department(which includes a private investigator from Texas named Charlie Parker), "The Imposter" poses some questions(some of which are very dark indeed) for which it may not think it has the answers. The first of which is how could both Nicholas' family and the American authorities be so easily fooled by somebody who did not even resemble him. I agree part of it may have to do with wish fulfillment, not only for the family but also the feds who may have been salivating at the opportunity to go after a human trafficking ring like the one Frederic described to them. The other part involves Frederic who I think underestimates his own talents when being interviewed. Even though he currently seems sincere, there are some chinks in the armor where the cool operator emerges from the shadows. But just as unreliable a narrator as he probably is, you also have to remember at the same time the old saying that even a broke clock is right twice a day.