Bart Layton’s THE IMPOSTER is a fascinating tale of deceit and self-deception, told with brilliant precision, as one by one, shocking revelations surface leaving the viewer chilled to the bone. A story far stranger than fiction, THE IMPOSTER is a thrilling documentary that must be seen to be believed.

In 1994, thirteen year old Nicholas disappeared on a walk home in San Antonio, Texas. Having vanished without a trace, three years later the authorities claimed that Nicholas Barclay had resurfaced in Linares, Spain. The call the family received was actually from the 23 year old Frédéric Bourdin, a pathological liar and serial impersonator whose claim that he was ‘unloved’ led him to assume approximately 500 false identities.

… ‘they pretended more than I did’ … ‘I washed her brain’ … ‘I wanted to be acceptable’ …

What is intriguing here is not only why Bourdin leads this nomadic chameleon lifestyle, but how it is possible for a family to accept a stranger into their home when it is so apparent that the boy they lost and the boy they found are not the same person. Layton cleverly manipulates the audience, first painting the deceived family as the victim of Bourdin’s fabrication, then drastically undercutting it when the nature of Nicholas’s disappearance in relation to his family is brought to the forefront. Bourdin is acutely unnerving in his claims of ‘they pretended more than I did’, ‘I washed her brain’ and ‘I wanted to be acceptable’. An artful deceiver, he appears as bewildered as anyone that his deceit had any gravitas, and seems gratified that his operation had such initial success.

Layton sharply calculates what to leave unsaid. Bourdin’s fictionalised, explicit tales of abuse recounted are perhaps too vivid to be false, Nicholas’s shrewd brother-in-law even describing Bourdin’s broken hand and the cigarette burns that line his back, raising uncomfortable questions about his ambiguous past. However, it is questionable whether an adult would go to such extreme lengths to surround himself with children simply to relive a lost childhood, Bourdin glowing over his ‘American high school’ experience and his feeling of ‘belonging’ at the Spanish children’s home. Bourdin is a dubious character, and his motives in this curious lifestyle of serial aliases may not be as innocent as he claims.

… the interviews are riveting as we are drawn into the complexity of Bourdin’s psyche …

There are a few facts this documentary does not address. For instance, the fact that Nicholas, a juvenile criminal with a history of running away, was due for a court hearing on the 14th June 1994, which happened to be just a day after his disappearance. This appears to be a key link in the tale, yet Layton doesn’t mention this detail at all, perhaps concerned that it would have steered the documentary in an unwanted direction.

The recreations slot seamlessly into the telling, and the interviews are riveting as we are drawn into the complexity of Bourdin’s psyche and the fragile family relationships. Layton raises far more questions than he answers, but that’s the brilliance of THE IMPOSTER; a film that, long after the credits roll, remains unsettling, confounding and unforgettable.

httpvh://youtu.be/2LuFOX0Sy_o