Adopting another's identity is seen as a melodramatic trick of the movies, like the evil twin in soap operas – but aren't we all imposture experts?
In The Big Picture, Romain Duris plays a prosperous Parisian lawyer who accidentally kills his wife's lover. And then, because he has always yearned to be an artist, he swaps identities with the dead man and starts a new life as a boho photographer. Taking the place of a dead person (as opposed to posing as a dead person, like Shaun of the Dead and friends) is a recurring motif of the noirish thriller, most memorably in Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley, filmed by both Réné Clément (as Plein Soleil, starring Alain Delon at the peak of his male pulchritude) and Anthony Minghella.
Ripley murders the man whose identity he appropriates, but impersonators more often drift passively into imposture because circumstances enable or even demand it.
In The Big Picture, Romain Duris plays a prosperous Parisian lawyer who accidentally kills his wife's lover. And then, because he has always yearned to be an artist, he swaps identities with the dead man and starts a new life as a boho photographer. Taking the place of a dead person (as opposed to posing as a dead person, like Shaun of the Dead and friends) is a recurring motif of the noirish thriller, most memorably in Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley, filmed by both Réné Clément (as Plein Soleil, starring Alain Delon at the peak of his male pulchritude) and Anthony Minghella.
Ripley murders the man whose identity he appropriates, but impersonators more often drift passively into imposture because circumstances enable or even demand it.
- 7/21/2011
- by Anne Billson
- The Guardian - Film News
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