A SELF-MADE HERO Movie Review

Un Heros Tres Discret
A Very Discreet Hero

When a young Frenchman (Mathieu Kassovitz) misses his chance to become an actual hero in World War II, he ingeniously fabricates an intricate and detailed scenario for himself in which he becomes widely known as a hero of the Resistance. Until the film's surprising ending, he is the only one who's aware that he is a hero who never was. On one level, Jacques Audiard's terrific film is a wry and convincing portrait of a man who's so superb at fashioning a fully formed character out of himself that his life becomes a movie in which he plays a part. By the end, however, A Self-Made Hero assumes much larger proportions, as Audiard's tale becomes a vision of a France which has, with the passage of time, convinced itself through a revisionist, collective imagination that its entire population was in the Resistance—even the collaborators. Kassovitz (the director of Café au Lait and Hate) turns in a smooth, charming and chillingly convincing performance in this clever, clear-eyed, and chillingly honest dark comedy.

NEXT STOP … The Sorrow and the Pity, Lacombe, Lucien, Sunday

1995 105m/C FR Mathieu Kassovitz, Anouk Grinberg, Albert Dupontel, Sandrine Kimberlain, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Nadia Barentin; D: Jacques Audiard; W: Jacques Audiard, Alain Le Henry; C: Jean-Marc Fabre; M: Alexandre Desplat. VHS, Letterbox NYF