The Man With A Thousand Faces

Imagine that you meet somebody who seems perfect for you. Intelligent, accomplished, affectionate; good-looking, but not so much so that you feel uncomfortable. Someone who’s easy to be with and supportive of everything you do. You move in together. Life is good. Years go by. Perhaps you have children together. Only then, through some odd little slip or through a letter from a stranger which arrives out of the blue do you learn that you are not, in fact, this person’s one and only – that your lover has another partner, another family, in another city. In fact, more than just one other partner. At least six.

Let’s call this man Ricardo. He goes by many names, but most of them are related to that one, and it fits with his accent and scraps of his most common backstory. To be crystal clear, he’s not just somebody who sleeps around. There are plenty of those in the world, and as some of the women here make clear, if that had been all it was then they could have overlooked it, could have carried on living the life they loved. Some tried to overlook it even as it was, with their romantic fascination giving way to a sort of scientific curiosity, or because they wanted to gather what information they could for their growing community. One woman, however, contacted documentarian Sonia Kronlund, who, with the assistance of a private detective, set out to try and find the real man behind all the stories.

Was he Argentinian or Brazilian? Was he really a surgeon or an engineer? He has told a lot of different stories, but elements of them are the same or similar, and as the women share their memories, common threads emerge. Together with old fashioned techniques such as tracking down and watching the places where he stays, this gradually begins to yield real information. Kronlund reflects on her own experience during lags in the investigation, worrying that it won’t deliver enough to justify a film, but each time the situation seems hopeless, something else emerges. Although she never manages to put together a complete picture, it’s surprising how much come together.

It’s also surprising how many of the women are willing to participate, though some choose to be played by actors in order to maintain a degree of privacy. They’ve all gone through phases of acute discomfort, with most feeling like fools, but connecting with each other helps them to realise that it wouldm, if anything, have been more foolish to suspect something as wild and unlikely as this. One or two of them jumped straight to the desire for revenge, which they hope Kronlund will be able to give them, and it’s intriguing to see the way that their perspectives shift as Ricardo begins to suspect that something is going on, that he may himself be being manipulated. Blending detective work with moments of tenderness and humour, the film repeatedly upends its own narrative, and there are always more surprises round the corner.

Some questions, of course, are difficult to answer. Why does Ricardo live this way? He seems to change personality traits between different women, as if he were an actor playing parts, but he’s always affectionate and affable – there’s no suggestion that he enjoys hurting people. Sometimes the way he handles situations suggests that he’s looking at it all like a game, or that this is simply a way for him to try and surround himself with love and attention, but a discovery close to the end suggests something rather different. What could be a simple manhunt is transformed, in Kronlund's hands, into an intriguing psychological study, with an unexpected and magical ending.