A Self Made Hero [DVD] [1997]

Thus claims Jean-Louis Trintignant in one of the brief modern-day 'interviews' in Jacques Audiard's wryly amusing and constantly engaging Un Heros Tres Discret/A Self-Made Hero. The main body of the film follows Matthieu Kassovitz's Albert Dehousse, Trintignant's younger self, an innocuous underachiever dreaming of heroic acts he never gets the chance to carry out who is devastated when he discovers his wife and new family have hidden their resistance work from him and denied him his chance to be a real hero. Betrayed, adrift and penniless in a newly-liberated Paris, he learns to take advantage of a moment in history when anything is suddenly possible and, thanks to fortuitous friendships with genuine hero Captain Dionnet (Albert Dupontel) and well-connected collaborator Monsieur Jo (Francois Berléand), reinvents himself as a self-effacing hero with just enough inside knowledge to get by. He gets himself photographed in the crowd at war crimes trials, gradually inveigling his way into newsreels with real veterans and even makes capital out of the fact that many of his comrades have no idea who he is by amiably telling them they clearly don't remember him and shouldn't embarrass themselves by pretending, shaming them into 'remembering' him and allowing him into their inner circle. An honest liar who knows how to listen and to sell the stories of others as his own, often to the very person he overheard it from, he rarely lies but rather omits, leaving his audience to fill in the gaps, just as he never asks for anything but simply takes what is offered because of who his audience has convinced themselves he is.

Not that he's the only one reinventing himself - the whole nation is as it tries to reclaim its dignity from the shame of Occupation and collaboration, with heroes and tycoons becoming villains overnight and new heroes coming out of nowhere to replace them. At such a time and in such a context, he's more a symptom of a country that wants to believe in itself again and so will consequently believe almost anything. To one degree or another, everyone in the film lies and reinvents themselves - even the aged resistants rewrite their friendship into distrust for the benefit of the modern-day cameras in light of subsequent events while others choose to believe the lie and even embellish it. In many ways the consummate actor demonstrates what an asset to the resistance movement he would have been as he effortlessly infiltrates the past to invent the person he wanted to be, and his inside track on the mechanics of deception actually makes him far more ideal for his job rooting out collaborators than those who really did fight.

Occasionally including modern-day interviews with fictional veterans and, at one point, a character talking to camera about his life of disappointment and eventual pointless death, despite the variety of stylistic devices it's a remarkably cohesive and controlled film, putting its various techniques at the service of the story rather than drawing attention to themselves. More than that, it's also very entertaining and often laugh-out-loud funny, never falling into caricature despite brief moments of surrealism, and a striking well-observed comedy on the foibles of human nature worthy of Billy Wilder that more than amply repays a second viewing.

Optimum's recent UK PAL DVD offers a good transfer, though irritatingly the subtitles are not widescreen friendly (not too much of a problem as the film is only 1.77:1 but still a lazy oversight) and includes some better than usual on-set interviews with the director, cast and the author of the novel Jean-Francois Deniau, who throws some light on the real life figures (and there were plenty of Albert Dehousses in post-war France it seems) that inspired the film.

In Self-Made Hero,Audiard shows his capacity to fashion his film around a strong male actor,concealing the formidable techniques of film-making, while constructing the craft of story-telling through self-conscious narration.Albert Dehousse,literally reinvents a past for himself through discretion,omission and charm, superposing himself into relationships with benevolent mentors,the Captain Dionnet and Monsieur Jo,he positions himself into photographs with veterans or at war trials and joins Resistance group-meetings.He invents a past for himself as a Resistance hero during the German Occupation;these carefully crafted,totally invented tales are then collaged with equally fake documentaries and television reportage.

This is a perfectly light-hearted approach to national guilt and personal impotence taking a few satirical swipes at France under the Occupation(who collaborated?) and the post-war need to reinvent its past, to reclaim lost pride and honour.The hero moves up through the Resistance world in comic mode as he is adopted by his father-figures,and the outcome is surprising, playing as it does on the human need to invent oneself.Mattieu Kassovitch plays this dreamer,Walter Mitty character to perfection. The supporting cast are second to none,especially the two female actresses,Kimberlaine and Grinberg.Actors need to lie to become other people.They learn their lines to become someone else,without being those people.

You don't often experience original film-making but Jacques Audiard's 'A Self Made Hero' is certainly one example. The story echoes Life is Beautiful - the avoidance of the realities of war through fantasy. Here, however, the fantastical is clearly linked with education, isolation and overt deceit. He gets married.

This is an intelligent film. 'He liked three things in life: big trees, deceit in every form and the past subjunctive tense.' I'll leave it to you to find out who he was or, indeed, if the quotation is correct.

The director uses a close-up technique throughout the film. The soundtrack reflects the nature of the story perfectly; chamber music, plucked strings. We even see the musicians. The living-room feel enhances the sense of confinement of the 'hero'. The artifice runs into the medium of film itself. There are dreamscapes woven into the narrative; they don't punctuate, they explain.

All the acting is assured whilst Mathieu Kassovitz's portrayal of the protagonist always held my attention and plays with sympathies, because for all his guises there are hesitations, mistakes, a sober contrast to his immediate society. The direction is intimate and it makes for a film that is comforting in its contradictions. Just like life. Beautiful.