The Man Who Lies

A man comes out of the forest into a town. He gives his name as Boris and says he was the friend of a resistance fighter, Jean; the Germans killed Jean and he barely got away. He goes to Jean's house and the family takes him in. Then he keeps talking, and with every telling the story changes: who gave whom away, how Jean died, whether Boris was even there. That the man is lying becomes clear at some point. What he is lying instead of does not. Alain Robbe-Grillet directs; ninety-seven minutes, with Jean-Louis Trintignant as Boris. It was shot in Slovakia. Robbe-Grillet was a novelist, and here too his subject is less the telling of a story than telling itself; scenes repeat, the same moment is played through again another way.