Few writers are accustomed to telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But few have also told a bigger, bolder lie than Clifford Irving who, in 1971, swore blind that he had interviewed the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes and thus obtained a large advance on a book of his memoirs.
Hughes has already been the subject of Scorsese's The Aviator, in which he was impersonated, not particularly satisfactorily, by Leonardo DiCaprio.
Here we only see brief clips of him in his younger days, before he locked himself in his mansion. Irving is the main character, played by a dark-haired Richard Gere. Not particularly satisfactorily again, I'm afraid.
It is not that Gere isn't a good actor. He can be fine when the mood takes him and the script gives him scope. But a literary conman like Irving requires someone a little less pretty and a little more caddish than Gere can easily achieve.
Lasse Hallström's film makes him into a writer on the edge of success with a new novel until The New York Times comes out with a terrible review and his publishers hastily withdraw. So we get the feeling that we should have some sympathy with his whopper, and that his loyal best friend Dick (Alfred Molina) and Edith, his European artist wife (Marcia Gay Harden), are right to stick by him.
Though competently made - and not badly performed by a cast which also includes Hope Davis, Julie Delpy, Stanley Tucci and Eli Wallach - The Hoax bares the signs of Hallström's recent Hollywood movies in never going far beyond the obvious. Long ago, the Swedish director made a wonderful movie called My Life As a Dog in his home country. It brought him hotfoot to America. Since then, however, he has never found the same sharp edge - and this is less of a literary thriller than it might have been.
The fact that nobody suspected anything until Hughes got wind of the fraud and held a curiously disembodied telephonic press conference from the Bahamas, is all the stranger when you consider that Irving had previously written a book called Fake! about the art forger Elmyr de Hory. But so excited were the publishers about getting hold of Hughes's memoirs that Irving nearly made a comfortable million out of the deal.
All this is detailed at a rather lingering pace, with quite a lot of surmise about Irving's fraught relationships. Otherwise, the film is obviously well researched and looks good without ever really catching fire. It has something to do with the casting. But principally it is the fault of a director who has become little more than a worthy workman.
The Hoax
Cert: 15
