Saw The Imposter (thanks, Kelly!) It was a documentary about a Texan family with a missing son and the French 23-year-old man who pretended to be their long-lost child. This isn't giving away the big twist by the way, the fact that the French guy is not actually their child is revealed almost immediately. The mystery of the film is how did this happen, and how was the family fooled?
The film is shot with dramatic reenactments staring, as far as I can tell, the actual french guy himself. I think this displays a shocking lack of introspection. I mean, this is a tremendously cruel thing he's doing to a family, but he's gleefully smiling and mouthing along his own narrated dialogue as though this were all just make-believe. The French guy himself is I think the most interesting, simply because he's completely unknowable. Even after he's caught (which of course he must be. we are watching this documentary after all,) he still remains slippery and changeable.
The family seem like friendly people, even though they do all talk in creaky robot-voices. Teh film explores a bit their motivations for believing this obvious impostor (he spoke with an accent, eye and hair color didn't match, was visibly older) but I think the obvious answer is that self-deception is a powerful thing. There's some further digging spurred by a wiley private investigator and by the impostor into the family's background, but it comes up empty, dramatically symbolized by a giant hole in a back yard that the camera crane-shots away from. An interesting film about a very unusual story.
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