Catfish (2010)

Don't let anyone tell you what it is.

How well can you get to know a person via the Internet? Is Facebook love really possible? The documentary film Catfish provides an interesting anecdotal take on contemporary issues of identity and personal relationships in the new online world of social networks. Catfish succeeds in making a pretty compelling story directly linked to a software service (Facebook), and what's more, unlike many other films, succeeds in making the computer screenshots and related shots of people using technology quite entertaining.

At the centre is Nev Schulman, a charming young New York photographer. His developing relationships, via Facebook and other indirect communications channels, with Abby, a precociously artistic 8-year old girl, with Angela, her mother, and above all, with Megan, her beautiful talented older half-sister, are captured, with excellent forethought, on video by his brother, Ariel, and friend, Henry Joost, fellow film-makers.

Over the course of a year or more, the audience is shown Nev's excitement at receiving packages from the mother, Angela, containing paintings by Abby. Nev also receives digital copies of songs that Megan has apparently written and recorded with her band. Nev is seen in various situations exchanging increasingly romantic text messages with Megan. They also speak happily together by phone. So why, the audience is left wondering, have Nev and Megan still not met up? New York to Michigan, it's just a plane ride away, isn't it?

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the experience of watching this film draws on the hints dropped by almost every commentator that all may not be quite as it seems on the surface. In fact, as the film plays out, there is the suspicion that, even more than the usual doubts about Internet identities, this project may contain a whole Russian dolls' nest of hidden mysteries, a metaphor Wikipedia describes as the "matryoshka… or nested doll principle". In the interview with Nev and the two film-makers on the DVD extras, it transpires that, in order to attract girls, Nev himself is somewhat liberal with the truth in some of his Facebook entries, for instance, exaggerating his interest in cooking. What's more, Nev himself points out, the way he is presented in the film - almost always engaging, upbeat, and frequently flashing his famous dazzling white smile - is a very partial truth. By the end of the film, I was even entertaining the fantastic notion that the real film-makers are not the ones we see onscreen (Nev and Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost) but instead a group of seedy middle-aged men out of sight behind the scenes cynically manipulating audience expectations. However, I have just read on Wikipedia that the film-makers have denied that the film is a work of fiction: "The Schulman brothers and Joost stand behind their original statements: the film is "100% true"".

Positing a worst case scenario where the young film-makers have falsified aspects of the film-making process, or relations with one or more onscreen characters, please don't be too quick to judge. As one film-maker in the DVD extras section asks another, how strictly honest are any of us about our public profiles? Let he who engages in social networks with no tweaking of his public image be the one to cast the first stone.

• Rating: High matinee
• When seen: 26 Feb 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.