Toto the Hero

Thomas is an old man who has believed one thing all his life: on the night he was born there was a fire at the hospital, the babies were switched, and he is really the son of the Kant family next door. The wealthy life was his and Alfred stole it. Now, in a care home, he is planning to kill Alfred. The subject is not revenge but a man explaining his own life through a story in which somebody stole it. Everything Thomas tells us is suspect; the film neither believes him nor calls him a liar, it only shows what the story does for him. The form cuts between three times: childhood, middle age and old age. The transitions go unexplained and sometimes a movement begins in one period and finishes in another. The narration also slides into the detective comic Thomas imagines. It is Jaco Van Dormael's first feature. It won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 1991 and was named best film at the European Film Awards. He returned to the same question in his later films: unlived lives and roads not taken. Michel Bouquet plays the old Thomas and Thomas Godet the child. Who it is for: viewers who like European cinema that plays with time and unreliable narrators. Who it is not for: anyone expecting straight chronology; the film jumps constantly and leaves some connections unexplained.