A Self-Made Hero

A French film built on the invention of an identity. Albert is an ordinary young man from the provinces. His mother told him his father was a hero killed in the war; in fact the man died of drink. The war ends. Albert goes to Paris and notices something: everyone says they were in the resistance and nobody checks. He builds a past out of books, newspaper archives and conversations he overhears. He learns the right names, the right dates and the right memories. He is accepted quickly. He rises through the army and is posted as an officer in occupied Germany. The target is not the man but the country. The narrative looks at how postwar France rewrote its own past: if all the accounts were true, nobody in the country would have supported the occupation. The form carries the idea too: mock documentary interviews, archive footage and voiceover run between the staged scenes. Mathieu Kassovitz plays Albert. Anouk Grinberg and Sandrine Kiberlain are in the cast. Jacques Audiard directed; the film won the screenplay prize at Cannes. A clever example for anyone who likes French cinema and satire built on history. For a viewer wanting a clear hero, the film vindicates nobody.