The Impostor: Film Analysis

The Impostor is a mystery documentary that feels more like a blockbuster thriller. It centres around the true story of Nicolas Barclay a blonde haired and blue eyes boy from Texas who goes missing at the age of 13. He is later thought to be discovered in South America three years later. He returns home with stories of how he was brutally kidnapped, tortured and raped by the military. But all is not as it seems, Nicolas is not who he claims to be. The identity of Nicolas is assumed by Frédéric Bourdin the 23-year-old, brown-haired, brown-eyed French-Algerian con artist. In the beginning he manages to fool the authorities but even more unlikely is that the family seems to accept he is Nicolas. After a while the investigators start to ask questions

From the beginning of the film I knew Bourdin was not Nicolas he was an impostor. Yet while watching I forgot that he was a master manipulator and saw him instead as a master storyteller. It was easy to take what he said at face value. He has this childlike quality about him, and was charming at times. I wanted to believe him despite knowing he was a convicted pathological liar. I imagine that the director was put in the same position. Through interviewing Bourdin and having him narrate most of the story Layton puts us in the position of many of Bourdin’s

It centres around the true story of Nicolas Barclay a blonde haired and blue eyes boy from Texas who goes missing at the age of 13. He is later thought to be discovered in South America three years later. He returns home with stories of how he was brutally kidnapped, tortured and raped by the military. But all is not as it seems, Nicolas is not who he claims to be. The identity of Nicolas is assumed by Frédéric Bourdin the 23-year-old, brown-haired, brown-eyed French-Algerian con artist. In the beginning he manages to fool the authorities but even more unlikely is that the family seems to accept he is Nicolas. After a while the investigators start to ask questions and this story takes an even stranger turn. It forces you to ask yourself why did Nicolas’s family so readily accept Bourdin as their son/brother. Are they simply holding on to a glimmer of hope? Are they trying to cover up the murder of Nicolas? Do they know more than they let on? The documentary explores these questions but makes it clear that it has no concrete