Dheepan (2015) Review!!!

Synopsis – Dheepan is a Sri Lankan Tamil warrior who flees to France and ends up working as a caretaker outside Paris.

My Take – Although I am sure it must be a coincidence, the timing of this film’s release is almost pitch perfect. Just when thousands of Syrians are trying to escape their warn-torn country, and some European politicians are complaining about a ‘swarm of migrants, trying to plunder the welfare state’, this film shows what it is all about to be a refugee & it is an ugly sight! Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, the film is about desperation, about fear, about loneliness, about poverty, about not being able to leave your past behind, no matter how hard you try. And yes, it is also about deceit. This thoughtful film has emotion , intense drama , thrills , political events and violence . The film thrives on silence and it results to be a French film shot nearly entirely in Tamil language . A nearly wordless opening showing the eponymous character’s tragic departure , the desperate meeting of Dheepan, Yalini, and Illayaal (our lead characters), and the voyage west is particularly effective . Director Jacques Audiard jumps smoothly through time and forces the audience to catch up with only the barest context, producing a marvelously suspenseful prologue. The refugees in the film have to lie to get away from the civil war in Sri Lanka. They pretend to be a family of three, but in reality they are neither husband and wife nor the parents of their child. This makes their life in Europe even more complicated. The tensions between the three of them come on top of the difficulties they already have adapting to life in a new country.

The story follows Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) is a Tamil fighter. He flees war-torn Sri Lanka with Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby), posing as his wife and daughter , hoping that they will make it easier for him to get asylum in Europe . The makeshift family arrives in France and Dheepan finds work as a caretaker for an apartment building that is also a drug front . As Dheepan finds work as the caretaker of a run-down housing block in the suburbs ruled by a nasty gangster (Vincent Rottiers) . But the daily violence he faces off quickly reopens his war wounds , and Dheepan is forced to reconnect with his warrior’s instincts to protect his new family. Director Jacques Audriard follows the three principals’ struggles to slip into the refugee’s life in France. The new Dheepan works as a tenement block janitor and lands a caregiver job in a neighboring block for Yalini. Her for M Habib who suffers from PTS, for whatever cause. The three refugees struggle to learn rudimentary French and to find their way in a confusing culture. An emotional connection develops between the man and the woman but Yalini resists connecting to the little girl, considering her a means to escape not a responsibility. The refugee’s difficulties in assimilation are dwarfed by the recidivist tensions they bring from their past. The janitor tries to resist his old rebel leader’s demands he raise money to buy Lebanese arms for his shattered forces back home. The scene revives the war within Dheepan. Dheapan revives his old militance and violence when a drug gang war erupts between the two tenement blocks. As the incipient family seems about to be shattered by this war, Dheepan relents and returns Yalini’s passport, which he’d commandeered to keep her from fleeing to London. The film is an extremely moving experience. All three leads command our empathy. When Yalini pleads on her cellphone for her passport she’s in a long shot, framed in a small window with the “daughter” isolated in another box far right, two pockets of light in the black block. The film provides a comprehensive vision of contemporary refugees and their accommodation. There’s a dignity in their urgent needs, their hunger for freedom and community, and a respect for their resourcefulness, as all three prove very capable and fine potential citizens. But there is also that baggage: the fury and violence they fled revives in their new setting. There has been some debate about the ending. It differs from the rest of the film. The raw realism from Dheepan’s life in the rundown neighborhood gives way to a more spectacular, adrenaline-fueled style. Although it is quite a change, I thought it worked well. It gives the film a sharp edge, particularly in contrast to the epilogue, which offers food for thought in itself.

The craftsmanship of the narrative lies in the wonderful balance between the hard realism of the subject and the cinematic poetry that permeates the film from beginning to end. The main leads, in particular, are not particularly good people. They discover the good parts of their own nature as the story progresses, thus developing as human beings in the process. The film is also shockingly well-acted. Jesuthasan, whose real life inspired aspects of the story, gives a beautifully rounded and humane performance. He wears the expression of a man who would like nothing more than to forget all his secrets. The scenes where he lets his inner brute out — usually while singing along to jubilant Tiger war songs from his childhood, or the occasional outburst when he finds he can no longer contain his resentment towards the hoods who are terrorizing his family — are raw and startling in their emotional power. Kalieaswari is equally convincing as a woman who is just starting to allow herself to care for her ersatz family. She has several tough scenes where her character is beaten down, literally and figuratively, and she’s in many ways, the heart of the movie. Vincent Rottiers, a tough, preening young criminal who fancies himself the cock of the walk, and who eventually finds himself at odds with the seemingly harmless new caretaker. Simultaneously childish and horrifying, the sneering Rottiers gives a performance that simmers with insinuations of cold, hardened evil. He’s mesmerizing to watch, even if his scenes with Srinivasan are sometimes imbued with a sexual tension that was a bit too uncomfortable for my liking. On the whole, ‘Dheepan’ is a very moving film with riveting action sequences & tender human sequences. Like its protagonist, “Dheepan” is full of pain, and it’s a masterfully executed film. Highly Recommended.