Taken at face value, this is a documentary about how a young photographer was deceived by a lonely housewife... how he gently confronts her, discovers her desperate existence and gets a tearful apology.
The way it unfolds is engaging. We do allow this woman some latitude. All of us can relate in some degree to the deep loneliness of a simple kind and the equally simple need for escape via fantasy.
What we cannot allow is the deeper deception from the other side, the side of the filmmakers.
This kind of documentary is becoming more common now, and that's too bad because it is a hard form to manage. The structure inserts the reporter as a key agent in the story, making it all but impossible to not be overtly manipulative.
In this case, these three guys knew the Facebook character was fake, and decided to exploit it. They got lucky in some respects, but in others they made conscious decisions to extend the the story for the film's sake.
I can understand this, but we have to be fair. There is manipulation and deception on both sides here. The drive in both cases is the same: to make a good enough story to hold a situation that selfishly sustains. They pretend to deliver insight on only one side of this.
The way it unfolds is engaging. We do allow this woman some latitude. All of us can relate in some degree to the deep loneliness of a simple kind and the equally simple need for escape via fantasy.
What we cannot allow is the deeper deception from the other side, the side of the filmmakers.
This kind of documentary is becoming more common now, and that's too bad because it is a hard form to manage. The structure inserts the reporter as a key agent in the story, making it all but impossible to not be overtly manipulative.
In this case, these three guys knew the Facebook character was fake, and decided to exploit it. They got lucky in some respects, but in others they made conscious decisions to extend the the story for the film's sake.
I can understand this, but we have to be fair. There is manipulation and deception on both sides here. The drive in both cases is the same: to make a good enough story to hold a situation that selfishly sustains. They pretend to deliver insight on only one side of this.