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The Imposter - Trailer


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WHAT are we prepared to believe? Almost anything, going on the evidence of The Imposter, if we really want it to be true. And the fact was - if anything in this life, really, can be counted as a fact - that the Dollarhide family really wanted to believe that the young man who turned up on their San Antonio doorstep, an FBI officer at his elbow, was their missing boy, Nicholas.

Nicholas Barclay was 13 when he disappeared, three years earlier. The newcomer looked nothing like him, in fact: he was dark-haired, swarthy and spoke with a French accent, whereas Nicholas was an all-American boy with blond hair and blue eyes. He was also obviously older than 16. But the facts didn't matter: his mother's and sister's desire to believe was too big to fail.

British filmmaker Bart Layton's debut feature documentary, The Imposter, is the story of this unlucky family's encounter with Frederic Bourdin, a persuasive conman of French-Algerian origin. The man had chutzpah; you have to give him that. Known to French police as ''the Chameleon'', he had spent his young life wandering western Europe, living intermittently in children's homes after persuading successive social services officers that he was an orphan, a vagrant or a runaway. Until he was picked up by police in a phone box in Linares, Spain, where it was somehow agreed by everyone - the police, the FBI, the US immigration department and by Bourdin himself - that he was Nicholas Barclay.

Missing Texan boy Nicholas Barclay (top) and Frederic Bourdin, the French-Algerian man who stole his identity.


Members of Barclay's family duly arrived, filled with hope. They believed. As Nicholas's sister tells the camera, she didn't even know where Spain was. ''That gives you an idea of their world experience,'' Layton observes. ''They are not unintelligent people, but they are very insular.'' The new Nicholas was duly ''repatriated'' to Texas, where he lived as a member of the Dollarhide family for four months. And they continued to believe. This boy knew the name of the dog Nicholas had as a child: it had to be him.

''I've worked on a lot of missing persons cases,'' says Charlie Parker, a private detective who has pursued the Barclay case for 20 years. ''I sometimes had to tell parents their child was dead. I almost feel like if I could bring a child to them who looks like their child or talks or acts like their child, they would take it instantly.''

The crunch came, as it had to come, when a tabloid television show came to interview them, bringing with them Parker. This was his first encounter with the case that would come to obsess him. ''I was fortunate enough to sit down next to a photograph of the actual Nicholas Barclay,'' Parker says. ''The imposter was sitting right across from me.

''I asked the cameraman to zoom in on his ears, because I knew that was the way to identify people for sure; I had read a book about Scotland Yard doing that.'' When he Photoshopped the picture of Nicholas with the cameraman's still, the two sets of mismatched ears told the real story. ''I like to brag about the ears,'' Parker confides. ''Because I did catch him that way. I'm proud of that.''

And thus the game was up. Bourdin subsequently went to prison for several years and is now back in France, where he proved surprisingly eager to participate in Layton's gripping film. It is remarkable to see him, unstained by guilt, speak plaintively of his life as a victim, his longing to belong, his hankering for an identity other than his own, even his desire for recognition as a fully realised individual. ''People come out wondering if it was really him,'' Layton says. ''It is. And he is a master storyteller; that is part of what he does.

''There was a sense for me that this guy was a master of manipulation and that he was manipulating me, telling me this story he wanted me to hear. And that was something I thought the audience should have: a direct experience of his manipulation. That way, you have access to a different sort of truth because you begin to understand how it is that he does what he does. A lot of what the film is about is truth and lies.''

Even so, the fact - there is that word again - is that nobody would believe this story if it hadn't actually happened. Certainly, nobody would believe in the Barclays. They were very reluctant to participate in the documentary at first, Layton says, having been badly burnt by public ridicule at the time. ''They didn't really want to be found; they weren't in the phone book. It took a long time to get to know them. I think they had had media experiences they didn't want to repeat: that thing of 'How could you not know your own flesh and blood?' So I think they were wary.''

At the same time, he says, they felt they had never been able to tell their side of the story, which was exactly what Layton wanted them to do. ''Because really for me the complexity of the film, what the film is all about, is different subjective versions of events, not an investigative documentary that says, 'He said this but you said that.' And I think once they understood that and that there wasn't anyone from Hollywood in a suit standing outside with a different agenda, they realised they did have the opportunity to tell their side. And while I don't think they will ever feel really positive, I know they are glad they did it.''

It is up to the audience, he says, to navigate the information he has collected; everyone seems credible, but not everyone can be telling the truth.

''I think you go into the film thinking, 'This can't be true' or 'This cannot happen', but I actually don't think you think that as you're watching it,'' Layton says. ''You're thinking they were wilfully deluded, but you don't want to scream at them how stupid they are; you relate to these people, quite deeply, because they are telling very emotional, personal stories. You are inside the story, in a way.''

The real Nicholas Barclay has never been found. He was a wild boy, a school truant who was prone to bursts of rage in a house that often resounded with fighting, according to neighbours Parker interviewed. In an effort to control him, his mother Beverly asked his uncle Jason to come and live with them; the uncle has since committed suicide. Parker has his theories. Experience has taught him, he says, that families will also do almost anything to cover up each other's crimes.

''I have seen people help sons and daughters put people in dumpsters, help them bury bodies, all sorts of things, so I know what families are capable of,'' he says. ''And to tell you the truth, after it's over, you don't hate them for that. In our country the family stays together, through thick and thin.''

New leads provided by people who saw the documentary have convinced him he is going to track down Nicholas Barclay. ''I am going to find him, no matter what,'' he says, ''even if I have to dig up half the yards in San Antonio.''

The Imposter opens on Thursday.