Naima Khan reviews a hit and miss Secret Screening of Bart Layton's compelling film, The Imposter.
Much like those Screwballs I got from the suspiciously inconsistent ice-cream vendors at the park circa 1994, last night's Secret Screening got to the best bit right at the end. And it got so good, the 45-minute queue and the lack of leg-room was easily forgotten. Well, almost.
Aside from the massive unnecessary queue (helpful suggestion to come), there are a few faux policemen and women checking tickets which gives rise to the faintest flickers of short-lived curiosity. Then there are the cramped leather seats in the balcony that mean that anyone who dares adjust their legs risks being mistaken for a farting elephant, a cursory introduction by a barrister and the lights in the hall that refuse to go off. I get the feeling this could have been organised better by my high school's resident stoners.
But then the film starts (properly in the dark and everything) and I realise I'm totally wrong. Conway Hall, flaws and all, is the perfect venue to screen dum dum duuuuum....The Imposter by Bart Layton, and that wonderfully bumbling barrister will prove himself in time.
The auditorium transforms itself effortlessly into an old town hall. Forget Holborn, we could easily be holed up in the San Antonio heat to hear the story of Fredric Bourdin who disguised himself as local resident, missing teenager Nicholas Barclay. 
The film, about a true story that took place in 1997, isn't without its flaws but takes a compelling look at what people are willing to believe and why. On an increasingly disturbing road of few but nonetheless gut-punching turns, we meet the likes of Nicholas' mother who defended her “son” to the tooth, the FBI agent who questioned his identity and the private investigator who eventually got Bourdin's confession. They are people you have to remind yourself aren't characters and who often don't realise how funny they are. As the laughs around this tragic and increasingly unsettling event come regularly, The Imposter becomes as much a comment on the audience and how we consume such events as it is on the baffled people it features.
For me, the most shocking moment of the night was discovering the interviewees in Layton's film are not portrayed by actors but the honest to goodness Texans of San Antonio. This I find out thanks to Luke Ponte, the barrister questioning Layton about the production of his film in a superb but rather straightforward interview. Luke asks about truth, money, inspiration and ethos and only after private investigator Charlie Parker shows up to make his case does the barrister relax, reveal a little of his personality and really turn it into something special. So does the creepy little tableaux on our way out (see image above).
I think shoehorning a concept into a venue may have been the most significant problem here. Had the screening reflected the architecture of Conway Hall more, the night would have had tonnes more atmosphere and I imagine we would have been able to file into the hall nonchalantly and not had to wait in a 45-minute queue!
Images: Jackie Dewe Mathews
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