Today is Data Privacy Day, and a good time for everyone to think about staying safe online. Amongst the hazards you may face otherwise are targeted scams, extortion and identity theft, which can have a very high cost. We’re focusing this week’s spotlight on imposters past and present, low tech and high tech, to explore some of the things that can happen when one person pretends to be somebody else.
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| Impostor |
Impostor - Amazon, Chili
Andrew Robertson writes: One of any number of Philip K Dick stories to be based on questions of identity, Impostor's flexibility includes the presence of a variant spelling. Some 50 years after first publication, Cold War sensibilities were replaced (in part) with a close simulacrum: the nascent fears of the Global War on Terror. The enemy in both is properly other, hostile aliens. Spencer Olham is a weapons designer, arrested on suspicion that he himself is a weapon, a replica with explosive intent. The notion of an unwitting suicide bomber isn't new, but the performances put fresh flesh on old bones.
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| The Talented Mr Ripley |
The Talented Mr Ripley - Netflix, Virgin TV Go, Chili
“I can impersonate just about anyone,” says Tom Ripley (Matt Damon in his best role to date), when asked if he has any talents. It’s one of the only three talents he possesses, and he has no money, yet he has ambition and the will to pursue it, to become a success at any cost – even at an awful cost to himself. As he inveigles his way into the life of Jude Law’s Dickie Greenleaf, pretending to be an old college acquaintance, one layer of deception is piled upon another. brilliant as he is, Ripley (who would go on to appear in further Patricia Highsmith books and two more films) is brilliant but also compulsive, and there’s a note of tragedy in the way that he loses track of his own identity. With equally impressive supporting performances from Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett and Philip Seymour Hoffmann, this is a masterclass in filmmaking from Anthony Minghella, whose directorial tricks with mirrors will take your breath away.
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| Police, Adjective |
Police, Adjective - BFI Player, Google Play, Amazon, Apple TV
Andrew Robertson writes: Undercover policing is a specific form of impersonation, but there are extremes. While identity is often at stake it's rare for deeper philosophical questions to be asked. While A Scanner Darkly has an undercover policeman who may be neither undercover, nor police, this Romanian film asks even more complicated questions about law and its enforcement. In 2009, 20 years after the execution of the Ceaușescus, this is a state still coming to terms with legacies which belong to now previous generations. Cristi is a dissatisfied detective, perhaps plain-clothes and not undercover. Except his opinions are such that he may be pretending, if only to be police.
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| Ratatouille |
Ratatouille - Disney +, Virgin TV Go
All of us feel like imposters sometimes, and rarely more so than when we’ve just started in new jobs. They say you have to fake it till you make it, but restaurant garbage but Linguini (voiced by Lou Romano) hasn’t a hope of succeeding as a chef until he acquires the assistance of brilliantly talented gastronome rat Remy (Paton Oswalt). For his part, Remy has always dreamed of working in a professional kitchen, but restaurant inspectors are not known for being well disposed towards individuals of his species. This unlikely partnership, which has to be kept secret, transforms both their lives, but there’s no shortage of calamity and desperate escapades along the way. Great characters and lively animation make this fun for all the family.
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| A Scanner Darkly |
A Scanner Darkly - Apple TV, Chili, Amazon, Google Play
Andrew Robertson writes: Pretending to the extent that it appears animated, though it is in fact rotoscoped, Richard Linklater's adaptation of a Philip K Dick novel is a worthy addition to that canon of conspiracy. It blooms with deception. The war on drugs is over, and drugs won. Substance D has forced a regressive surveillance state, supported by informants. Identities are masked by 'scramble suits' so even the police don't know who the police are. Keanu Reeves is no stranger to twisty science fiction, Robert Downey Jr and Woody Harrelson and Winona Ryder form a striking cast.
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| Vertigo |
Vertigo - Chili, Apple TV
From To Catch A Thief to North by Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock’s work is full of people pretending to be other people, but none of it comes close to his 1958 classic, which sees a woman’s true identity plunged into crisis by two men who each want her to be somebody else – the same somebody else, but for very different reasons. Kim Novak is electric as the troubled woman who agrees to an impersonation but longs to matter in her own right, while James Stewart presents us with one of cinema’s most monstrous heroes, tortured because what he loves is not real. With in layer upon layer of mystery set around iconic locations, this is widely considered to be one of the best films ever made.
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| The Imposter |
The Imposter - Apple TV, Amazon
Amber Wilkinson writes: Sometimes the most remarkable thing about an imposter story is how willing everyone is to believe in the interloper - fans of this sort of thing, should look out for My Old School, when it has its UK première at the Glasgow Film Festival next month fresh from Sundance and you can get yourself in the mood with this equally remarkable tale. Bart Layton shoots his documentary like a thriller as he recounts what happened when the blond, blue-eyed Nicholas Barclay vanished at 13 only for a 23-year-old French-Algerian to turn up in Spain three years later claiming to be the boy. Given how 'the imposter' Frédéric Bourdin looked like Nicholas, the film opens out - via interviews with Bourdin and Barclay's family into an interrogation of why everyone was so willing to believe it. A gripping BAFTA winner that proves fact really can be stranger than fiction.
