Cannes, Day 9: Timing is everything, and so recent Ponzi schemes and the lure of hyped investments should add resonance to French writer/director Xavier Giannoli’s A L’Origine/In the Beginning. Not that it needs help engaging an audience with its intriguing, masterfully shot story based on the real-life con of a man known as Philippe Miller who gets caught in his own machinations. As the film begins, Miller has just returned from prison, having served a sentence about which we learn nothing, his past left shrouded in mystery. As a result, every detail of Miller’s behavior and the few words he speaks impart important clues to his all-important character or lack thereof. Grappling with minimal explanation, we become the film’s detectives. In this regard, director Giannoli’s strategy proves most appealing. The episodic narrative demands and merits our careful attention as Miller relaunches the building of a highway leading, well, nowhere.

Anchoring almost every scene, actor Francois Cluzet as Miller lifts the film onto his shoulders and carries it from beginning to end. Reminding me a bit of Dustin Hoffman, Cluzet makes the most of his intense eyes, though his monosyllabic responses, when there’s any verbal response at all, get a bit tiring as the film proceeds. This proves less a drawback than it could have been because, while Miller is the center of the storm, as much interest swirls around the townspeople—the mayor, the motel staff, equipment rental managers, constructions workers, and the cross section of citizens who keep the town humming. Their town has been in bad shape for two years, ever since the original road construction company left unexpectedly. Desperate to turn their fate around, a pas-de-deux ensues between the conman and those want with all their hearts to believe.

The social context and the psychological dynamics make In the Beginning much more than a sensational dramatization of a news story. And perhaps the most curious development is in our own conflicted emotions as we get caught up in the elaboration of Miller’s scheme, not that we forget for a minute the impact of his con. As always, the con reveals as much about us as we react as the perpetrator, and Giannoli never lets us off the hook.

Diane Carson, a freelance writer from St. Louis, has reviewed and taught film for over two decades. She’s covering the 2009 Cannes Film Festival for STLtoday.com.