| The Chameleon | |
|---|---|
French Theatrical Poster |
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| Directed by | Jean-Paul Salomé |
| Produced by | Ram Bergma Pierre Kubel Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar William O. Perkins III Cooper Richey |
| Written by | Natalie Carter |
| Starring | Marc-André Grondin Famke Janssen Ellen Barkin |
| Music by | Bruno Coulais |
| Studio | Gordon Street Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 23 April 2010 (Tribeca Film Festival) 23 June 2010 (France) |
| Running time | 106 minutes |
| Country | Canada France United States |
| Language | English French |
The Chameleon is a 2010 film directed by Jean-Paul Salomé. The screenplay by Natalie Carter is based upon the true story of Frédéric Bourdin who impersonated a missing child named Nicholas Barclay in San Antonio, Texas in the 1990s. Much of the true story was incorporated into the film although the years have been altered and the location was moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
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A young man (Marc-André Grondin) in Spain shaves off all his body hair and turns himself into the police. The man claims to be a 16 year old boy from Louisiana named Nicholas Mark Randall, who had been missing for four years. His story is that he was kidnapped by a child prostitution ring in France who physically altered his appearance, including changing his eye color.
He is reunited with his family who immediately have their suspicions regarding his story. His mother (Ellen Barkin) and half brother Brendan (Nick Stahl) do not seem to accept him, and many questions are open regarding whether this man could in fact be their lost family member, considering he does not look anything like the boy who left and now talks with a French accent. His sister Kathy (Emilie de Ravin) accepts his story without hesitation and eventually so does his possible mother.
F.B.I. Agent Jennifer Johnson (Famke Janssen) strongly suspects that he is lying because she has had extensive experiences with people lying to her, including a man who was a child murderer whom she had dated. Meanwhile, his story starts to unravel and the true story of what happened to Nicholas starts to emerge.
The film premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival in the United States.[1]
The film received mostly mixed to negative reviews from major critics. The website metacritic.com, which assigns a normalized score to film reviews, gave the film a 41 out of 100, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[2]
Stephen Holden of The New York Times:
| “ | From the beginning there is little question that Nicholas is an impostor. But why? The movie barely touches on that question except for its unsatisfying, sentimental conclusion that his con artistry was an appeal for love... Another wrong decision of this film, the English-language directorial debut of Jean-Paul Salomé (Arsène Lupin) from a screenplay he wrote with Natalie Carter, is its framing of the story as a police procedural.[3] | ” |
Aaron Hillis of The Village Voice:
| “ | Screenwriters, take note: Unless your story is a whodunit, it’s an unforgivable flaw to telegraph early and often that, sometime during the final act, we should anticipate the proverbial rug to be pulled. Every suspicious gesture and line of exposition in The Chameleon teases about what the twist will eventually turn out to be, and French co-writer/director Jean-Paul Salomé’s first English-language feature forgets that the journey needs to compel, regardless... Is he an imposter? And if so, why has the family embraced him? And why aren’t the psychological, emotional or moral implications of the maybe-lies ever explored in this dreary drama?[4] | ” |