The Imposter

Forgot one more film from the plane: The Imposter, a rather bizarre documentary about a 23-year-old heavily-accented not-even-very-youthful-looking Frenchman who manages to pass himself off as a 16-year-old American who disappeared at 13 and was small, blonde and pretty. The family take him in and he even makes national news with his story, getting increasingly outlandish in his lies – he was kidnapped by a child prostitution ring in the upper echelons of the military who broke his bones and went so far as to change his eye colour for no apparent reason. Eventually it all comes out and he’s arrested, but then comes the question of just why the family were so quick to believe such a different-looking man is their lost son – grief and desperation and an overestimation of just how far abuse can go to completely changing a person, or an ulterior motive? The latter is put forward but seems unlikely to me, especially if they were willing to let the ‘boy’ go on television and appear in the papers. Amazing he didn’t flat-out refuse that part, too. A case of reality being stranger than fiction…