The Imposter (2012)

The feature length documentary starts off with home video of a young boy filming around a household, detailing the rooms in the house. The camera boy is Nick who is filming his sister’s birthday where he mentions that she has a TV in our room and other items that he seems to envy her over. The footage keeps cutting to different locations of the house. The footage cuts to the kitchen where the family is all sitting around a table about to cut the birthday cake, the boy turns the camera around and tells the camera his name (Nick). The film then cuts to black
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The film comes up with text of where the documentary is taking the audience - Texas, America. The film explains to the audience that Nick went missing in 1994 and presumed dead as there was no contact or sighting of him. The film cuts to a montage of interview between the Mother of the missing boy, the sister and a friend of a family. They are all talking about the disappearance of Nick Barclay and the reappearance of him. The film then cuts to Spain where we see a young boy is at a phone box being picked up by the police. The young boy who is picked up by the police is not Nick Barclay by an Imposter. The documentary resolves around how imposter Frédéric Bourdin tricked the authorities & the Barclay family.

Majority of the film is reconstruction of the events of what happened after the reappearance of Nick.  I feel that is the reason why I enjoyed this documentary is because of this factor. Whilst any of the interviewees describe what happened, the audience had visuals that I feel engages the viewer into the story. The story is very gripping and it did feel like a ‘film’ as it is unbelievable and would work as a feature film. I believe that the documentary would’ve lost its gripping factor if the film did not be mostly reconstruction of the story.

One of the interviewees in the documentary is Frédéric Bourdin; which surprised me because he was the Imposter but he is telling his side of the story. I think having him tell his side was brilliant as the audience will get answers on why he did what he did. The camera composition and techniques were impressive; some interviewees were positioned to the left or the right of the frame but Frédéric Bourdin was talking directly into the camera (talking head). This tells the audience that Nick is the main person to focus on in the film and it shows that the person was not ashamed of what he done.

The sound design and score of the documentary gave the documentary an intense feel and somewhat scary which hooks the audience. The Imposter is a 9/10 documentary that stays with you for days and makes you think – how the hell did this happen?