Pierre Niney is excellent as the would-be novelist who takes one risk and then faces an ever-escalating comeuppance. Adroit plot. Believable characters. Sharp direction. And a brilliant, if heart-wrenching, twist at the end.
A talentless young French writer finds a dead man’s brilliant unpublished manuscript and passes it off as his own. No spoilers – this all happens in the first ten minutes. The book is a first-hand account of soldiering in the 1950s Algerian war. What could possibly go wrong? Finding out will keep you glued to the screen. The more dangerous and ridiculous his predicaments become, the more you’ll squirm with him. The suspense is akin to watching Kevin Costner becoming increasingly cornered in No Way Out. Great stuff, with a doozie of an ending that will make you both laugh and cry.
This is an excellent film in every respect, full of suspense, surprises, and tension from start to finish. The initial storyline, as such, has been followed in other feature films: an aspiring writer pretends that a piece of writing he has plagiarized was written by him, and sends it to a publisher. The rest follows. This initial act of deceit sets in train a chain of events that unfolds with the mechanical precision of a sophisticated clock, ticking away in the background, relentlessly.
The acting is very good and the situations are plausible from start to finish, as the characters respond to what is happening to them and to each other. (I don't want to say too much...) The tension and suspense are close to unbearable at times: one misstep and you can lose everything, including the woman you love...
It is a gem of a film, which should become a classic of the genre in due course, in my view. Enjoy.