[THE IMPOSTER screens Saturday November 24th at 9:45 pm and Sunday November 25th at 6:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]
Review
by Bob Ignizio
If a child of yours went missing, and
then 3 years later someone claiming to be that child showed up on
your doorstep looking and sounding nothing like who they claimed to
be, would your desire to have that child back be enough to make you
accept them? That's the question at the heart of THE IMPOSTER,
a documentary about a real case in Texas where something like what
I've just described apparently happened.
That
Frédéric Bourdin, the person claiming to be Nicholas Barclay, was
not who he claimed to be is beyond dispute. Bourdin was several years
older than Nicholas and looked nothing like him. He knew almost
nothing about the boy he was trying to impersonate. And yet, as we
learn through interviews with Bourdin and the Barclay family, his
deception was successful. Then again, maybe it wasn't. Maybe Bourdin
wasn't the only one spinning a web of lies.
