A Perfect Man

A French thriller. Mathieu wants to be a writer and is not one. Publishers turn him down and he makes his living working for a removals firm. One day, clearing out a dead man's house, he finds a notebook. It is a diary kept during the Algerian War; the family does not want it and it is among the things to be thrown away. Mathieu takes it and publishes it under his own name. The book draws wide attention, wins a prize and he becomes a known writer overnight. Three years pass. Mathieu is with the daughter of a wealthy family and spends the summer at their house. The publisher is waiting for a second book and he has not a line. Then someone implies something. The tension comes from the fear of being caught: every conversation is an examination, every question a threat, and Mathieu builds new lies to defend himself. What the narrative is interested in is not the crime but whether authenticity can be imitated; the man cannot write, but he has learned to look like a writer. Pierre Niney plays Mathieu. Ana Girardot and André Marcon are in the cast. Yann Gozlan directed. A tight production for anyone who likes thrillers and narratives set in the literary world. For a viewer looking for sympathy, the main character stands on the wrong side throughout.