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The Imposter2012 | 95 min | R | 2.39:1
“The Imposter” is a picture that carries authentically trembling suspense, though it’s perfectly at ease dishing out nuggets of information gradually to perfect its atmospheric grip. It’s a riveting feature once the pieces of this true-crime case come together, but it’s not a perfect film, which seems like a letdown when taking into account the psychosis at hand. Wonderful and wonderfully frustrating, “The Imposter” is a documentary as strange as its subject; it’s equal parts repellent and irresistible, trying to make sense out of a missing persons case that consistently seeks to top itself in terms of revelations and procedural dead-ends. 
In 1994, 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay went missing from his San Antonio, Texas neighborhood, stunning his family, including mother Beverly and older sister Carey. Frederic Bourdin was a 23-year-old Spanish man compulsively looking for attention and “love,” electing to pass himself off as a teenager to gain access to juvenile homes, forced to pick an identity when law officers pressed him about his story. Telling authorities he was Nicholas, Bourdin’s simple act of impersonation kicked off a worldwide event, with the young man sent to America to reunite with his family after three years of, according to Bourdin’s narrative, sexual abuse, kidnapping, and brainwashing. Accepting the boy into their home, Beverly and Carey refused to accept the clear differences between Bourdin and Nicholas, while private investigator Charlie Parker and FBI Special Agent Nancy Fisher begin to peel away the pretender’s layers of lies, discovering a dark impulse within the charlatan that leads to damaging accusations toward Barclay’s family. Directed by Bart Layton, “The Imposter” has one astonishing story to sort through, using a mix of news footage, interviews, and convincing recreations to help glue the pieces of the Barclay case (dramatized in 2010’s “The Chameleon”) together. It’s a natural assembly of disparate elements, organized neatly and paced exceptionally, submitting a snowballing sensation as Bourdin’s story of instant attention explodes into confessions, accusations, and unfinished business. Layton displays impressive command over the momentum of “The Imposter,” using striking conversations with the man at the center of the storm to illuminate a colossal swell of confusion emerging from true motivations and lasting satisfaction with his actions in the summer of 1997. 
Frederic Bourdin is a loathsome individual, smug and touched by insanity. It’s amazing that Layton could acquire his cooperation for the documentary, but it’s clear by the second half of the film that Bourdin couldn’t live life for very long without attention. He’s a diseased creature who’s quite proud of his skills of deception, wearing his time as Nicholas as badge of honor, eager to share his story and wow audiences with his experience. He’s a ghoul, yet a dangerously charismatic one, making him an intriguing subject for Layton to expose. Bourdin is genuinely someone you’ll love to hate. His sketchy personality is the very point of “The Imposter,” asking viewers to comprehend how this con artist could last so long as a lost boy, especially when all the evidence (he only faintly resembled the missing teen) opened up colossal holes in his story. That Carey and Beverly accepted Bourdin so readily drives the mystery of “The Imposter,” questioning why the two women ignored and rebuffed suggestions of fraud from the likes of Parker and Fisher, who, late in the case, were desperately close to cracking the European’s scheme, only to find the man pulled even tighter inside the family dynamic. “The Imposter” generates exceptional suspense with these questions, following the seeds of irrationality as they blossom into grief-stricken insanity, or worse, clear-headed intent. 
Bombshells are dropped in the final act, urging “The Imposter” into a nuclear showdown between all involved parties as Bourdin’s deception is laid bare. It’s a spellbinding climax, but unsettlingly abrupt, leaving more questions than answers. Introducing a macabre theory about the Barclay Family’s fixation with Bourdin, Layton doesn’t do nearly enough to pay off the shocking string of accusations, short-sheeting the documentary at the exact point it’s primed to explode. “The Imposter” is hypnotic stuff, dripping with examples of mental illness and mind-bending achievements of denial, but there’s no conclusion to the case, at least one that satisfies. Instead, the picture trails off at the worst possible moment, though I suppose its flaccid legal summary and closing visual manipulations are intentional, leaving audiences with a thoroughly sickening feeling to appreciate Frederic Bourdin’s prolonged dance of narcissism. Director: Bart Layton » See full cast & crew |
 
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