Much hype surrounded Jacques Audiard’s latest film, which he kept under wraps until its unveiling in competition in Cannes. After sweeping the awards board around the world with A Prophet, could he pull off the Palme d’Or with Dheepan?
Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) is the hero of the film, an ex Tamil Tiger seeking refuge from war-torn Sri Lanka. The opening scene takes place in a chaotic refugee camp, with a woman, Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) seeking out an orphan girl. She needs one to complete a fake family consisting of Dheepan, her and a child, using the passports of a real dead family. It’s a shocking reminder of the lengths people will go to – bartering children and IDs – to escape conflict.
From here the “family” sets out on a crowded boat in the night and eventually reaches Paris. Once the trio have had their interview with the immigration officer, which includes some advice from the interpreter who’s an old comrade, Dheepan is sent to work as a caretaker in a banlieu.
We are now in more familiar Audiard territory as we see gangsters patrolling the rooftops and taking over tower blocks for their wheeling and dealing. Yalini acts as a carer to a doddery boss, whose electronically-tagged son Brahim (Vincent Rottiers) is now leader of the towers. There are some lovely scenes between Yalini and Brahim: she talks to him in Sri Lankan and he tries to make himself understood in French. Meanwhile, the faux daughter Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby) has to teach Yalini, who shows zero maternal instincts, how to be a mother. Slowly, the family becomes a functioning unit and some tenderness grows between them.
So far, so socially realist. Yet Audiard is not content with depicting a straightforward tale of an immigrant’s struggle in a new land. Those gangs looming up on the roof and the re-emergence of political figures trying to lure Dheepan back into an underground Tamil movement show that you can run from violence and danger but it can quickly catch you up. The penultimate scene shifts the balance of the film completely and we enter action hero territory, Dheepan turning into a Sri Lankan John McClane as he tries to rescue his wife.
This is a shocking scene and is so surreal it could even be viewed as a nightmare. For many it will not ring true, creating a messy mix of social realism and over-the-top violence. However, as is the case with so many things in life, like scrambled eggs or sex, messy can also be good, and Audiard’s audacity and bravura filmmaking skills mean that though Dheepan has to break a lot of eggs, Audiard has created a tasty dish.
With a universally excellent and relatively unknown cast, a brave use of language (almost all the dialogue is in Sri Lankan), Audiard depicts the mental and physical violence that many immigrants have suffered and still endure when transplanted onto foreign soil. The film makes for compelling viewing and is a highly sympathetic depiction of the immigrant’s plight.
See the new trailer below:
