By Roger Childs
Your [bank]notes are more authentic than the originals. –Inspector Andre Mattei
The Cezanne of counterfeit money
This is another brilliant film from the New Zealand French Film Festival. Based on the life of Polish immigrant Jan Bojarski, it follows the counterfeiter’s life from his creation of highly convincing fake passports in World War Two through his long ‘career’ forging French banknotes.
Bojarski graduated from university in Poland as an engineer and architect, and over 20 years used his many skills to produce tens of thousands of bank notes of different denominations. Five stars.
Combatting discrimination
The Pole marries French woman Suzanne and they have two children. He has trouble getting official papers as a French citizen, so sub-consciously works to get his own back on the authorities. After many unsuccessful attempts to sell his inventions legitimately he becomes a forger for a gangster, but when things get too hot he decides to strike out on his own.
He sets up a workshop at the back of a shed in his garden. Here Bojarski constructs his equipment and meticulously forges various French notes for many years. He quickly realizes that a certain type of cigarette paper is the best for his fake notes.
He works alone is his secret hideout, but his wife eventually finds out what he is doing. He is incredibly carefully and has three rules in his distributing of the notes. One is to only use just one note at a particular shop and just buy just once in a street. So he moves all over France to tobacconists where he can get the crucial cigarette paper. He travels discreetly by train posing as a well-dressed businessman and never tells anyone where he is going.
Unfortunately he helps out an old acquaintance and consequently his life unravels.
Top performances
In the starring role Reda Kateb is superb and as his wife Suzanne, Sara Giraudeau is also very impressive. Kateb occasionally displays passion, violence and quick thinking, but most of the time he is focused on forgery and concentrating on upsetting the Bank of France, as the role demands. It is a masterly display of his talent. In the role of chief forger-hunter Inspector Mattei, Bastien Bouillon gives a polished performance trying to bring Bojarski to justice.
Director Jean-Paul Salome brings the tale of perhaps the greatest counterfeiter of all time to life with tight editing and appropriate changes of scene.
This is yet another classy film from the French Festival which is travelling to many centres and is bound to be put on general release like The Richest Woman in the World starring the legendary Isabelle Huppert.
For Waikanae filmgoers Shoreline is bound to feature the general release movies.