The success of Netflix’s Tinder Swindler was really only the tip of the iceberg when it came to men conning their way into the hearts of lovelorn women and then fleecing them for everything. That’s not quite the case with the rather ambitiously titled The Man with a Thousand Faces because the man in question seems to be something of a serial dater raking in only nominal amounts of cash although in one exception he does empty a woman’s flat of its valuables , candle sticks and all.
The original Man with the Thousand Faces was horror actor Lon Chaney but here the man in question is Alexandre no, Daniel, no Brenda (OK we made up that last one) but whoever he is director Sonia Kronlund’s documentary focuses on several of the women whose lives he disrupted to varying degrees. Their emotions vary greatly but all are clearly deeply hurt by his actions with one having been left holding the baby literally when he left her pregnant before flitting off to another part of the world to continue his version of international speed dating.
Kronlund’s film ultimately tracks him down after several of his conquests have discovered each other’s existence and the film opens with one of them and a private investigator on a stakeout having tracked him down to a flat in Poland. That the PI suggest flushing him out by suggesting they get the police to evacuate the building as part of a bomb scare they could ring in suggests the PI is the sort of catastrophic muddle headedness that thinks he can save time cutting his toe nails using a combine harvester. Their stakeout is a precursor to what tops and tails the film with the filmmakers managing to coax him out to do a filmed interview on the pretext of foreign nationals embracing sport in another country. And what should be the films climactic take down proves to be its major failing point. As they sit there interviewing him about his interest in running what should have been an ever escalating set of questions that would see him realize that he he’s been cornered is instead frittered away in what is a disastrously missed opportunity.
The Man with a Thousand Faces is not the first and unlikely to be the last to cover such stories of these self-obsessed lotharios and this focusses as much on his victims as much as it does tracking down and uncovering his own story. He seems wholly unaware of being something of a sociopath, never really conning women out of money but as much of a simultaneous serial dater and it leaves the audience wondering if this guy is a player or a prick.
Rumours that there will be a sequel titled, ‘The Woman with the Two Faces’ about Meghan Markle remain unfounded.
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related feature : Anna Kendrick’s true life serial killer thriller, ‘Woman of the Hour’
Here’s The Man with a Thousand Faces trailer ……
