A SELF-MADE HERO / UN HEROS TRES DISCRET (66)

Directed by: Jacques Audiard

Starring: Matthieu Kassovitz, Anouk Grinberg, Jean-Louis Trintignant

The Pitch: In France after the end of WW2, a thoroughly unremarkable young man passes himself off as a Resistance hero.

Theo Sez: Audiard's talent, both here and in SEE HOW THEY FALL, seems to be for creating little magpie's-nests of clever and / or stylish moments inadequately held together by intriguing but undernourished stories, so that the whole thing more or less collapses in the memory. It took a second viewing to remember how artful this was : just the opening minute (Trintignant telling the story about the six German soldiers, ending with "The best lives are invented" over that strange shot of the out-of-focus figure approaching the camera, then the pizzicato violins building in the background as the main title flashes) is so elegantly put together it makes the heart soar a little, and there's plenty of other delights - Albert's whispered conversations with himself as he acts out heroic scenarios, or the randomly-interspersed bits of newsreel footage and mock-documentary "interviews" with various historian types commenting on his deception. That these detract from the central tension - making it clear that our hero will be found out eventually - doesn't seem to have occurred to anybody, and indeed the premise per se isn't particularly well-served, amusing enough but crowded out by the various embellishments. It's interesting as a character-study, a companion piece to ZELIG - a man who's a vacuum, filled by whoever he happens to come into contact with - and of course as a comment on the military mind, reducing human foibles to the Official Record and institutionalising deceit (as our man finally discovers) through its culture of unambiguous heroism. Beguiling, original and beautifully-made - albeit somehow, on a basic level, not quite there.