A Self-Made Hero Reviews

Vive la fraud! This scathingly ironic, deeply disturbing film takes its cue from a remark by troubling protagonist Albert Dehousse (Mathieu Kassovitz). "The best lives are the ones we make up," observes Albert, and he should know. Albert spends most of WWII in an apathetic haze with his collaborationist mother, rousing himself only when he discovers that his new wife and her family are -- quel horreur! -- involved with the Resistance. Decamping for Paris on the eve of the Liberation, Albert finds a city full of collaborators and cynical profiteers scrambling to provide convincingly heroic answers to that all-important question: "And just what did you do during the war?" Albert, a master of pretense and prevarication, figures the time is right for a little personal reinvention and quietly infiltrates the ever-growing fraternity of Resistance veterans, worming his way through their ranks until he himself is hailed as a national hero. Jacques Audiard (who also scripted the very black comedy BAXTER) has constructed a film that works equally well on two levels: as an often hilarious -- if damning -- allegory (the somewhat cloudy past of former French President Francois Mitterand comes to mind), and as wonderfully suspenseful entertainment. Filled with fanciful touches, propelled by a charismatic performance by actor-director Kassovitz and underscored by a propulsive orchestral soundtrack, Audriad's film articulates an uncomfortably familiar vision of a nation desperate enough to believe its own lies, where the copy is inevitably much better than the real thing and heroes are only as genuine as one needs them to be.