MAY 10, 2016
Please stay with me on this one.
Of all the movies currently in release, “Dheepan” may be the most torn-from-the-headlines relevant in exploring the phenomenon of massive immigration to Europe. Yet it was completed more than a year ago, which tells you how prescient the film is. Last May, “Dheepan” won the coveted Palme D’or (Best Picture) prize at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival over a large number of acclaimed films, including this year’s Oscar-winner “Son of Saul.” If “Dheepan” is not quite up to the level of brilliance of “Son of Saul,” it’s damned close.
“Dheepan” begins in Sri Lanka. Sivadhasan (Antonyhasan Jesuthasan) is a soldier with the Tamil Tigers, a militant group that backs secession in the Sri Lankan Civil War. (In real life, Jesuthasan actually fought with the Tamil Tigers himself.) When it becomes clear that his side is going to lose the war, Sivadhasan, fearing retaliations, decides to flee the country to start a new life in France. But he needs a cover story in order to get out. He is given the passport of a dead man, Dheepan, and finds two people –Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan), a young woman with similar goals and an orphaned girl Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby) — who, as a group, decide to pose as a fake family in order to get political asylum.
Thanks to a sympathetic translator, the fake family manages to make it through to Paris, and Dheepan (which Sivadhasan now calls himself) is able to get a job as a groundskeeper in a rundown public housing project. Pressed for money, Yalini finds employment as a caretaker to a neighboring drug lord, who uses his apartment as a base of operations for the French gangs who control a good portion of the housing project. And at school, Illayall is made out to be the outsider and lashes back as a result.
Other than the regular gunfire outside their window (no small disturbance), the gangs don’t bother Dheepan and his family too much at first, but Yalini soon begins to form a bond with the gang leader Brahim (Vincent Rottiers), who, when he decides to talk about the gang rivalry within the housing project, leads Yalini to realize that their new home contains the kind of warfare that Dheepan thought that he had left behind in Sri Lanka.
Acts 1 and 2 of “Dheepan” comprise a thoughtful and sensitive depiction of the struggles endured by immigrants to Europe who know little of the language and culture of the country that they now call home. But Act 3 is another animal entirely.
Dheepan finally sees Yalini’s point of view that he is back in a war zone, and when the gangs cross the line with regard to his family, Dheepan instinctively kicks into soldier mode and wields a machete, a Molotov cocktail and a screwdriver in a showdown with the gangs. Let’s just say that all holy hell breaks loose.
Some critics are not crazy about Act 3 of “Dheepan,” saying that it’s a betrayal of the incisive portrayal of the immigrant experience of the first two acts. I’m OK with it in the way that I was OK with the bloodbath at the end of “Taxi Driver.” The violence there and here is not gratuitous because it’s built with character. In “Dheepan,” this guy is a warrior, and even though he’s in a fake family, he has come to care for the people around him, and when they are threatened, the knives come out.
Director Jacques Audiard, who is best known in art-house circles for his acclaimed prison drama “A Prophet” and his great character study “Rust and Bone” with Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts, has always had a little bit of action genre touch, even in his most high-falutin’ arty movies. And even though Audiard sometimes works with movie stars like Cotillard and Schoenaerets, his skill with actors is even more apparent with the novice actors who dazzle here in “Dheepan.”
“Dheepan” opened in New York last Friday to impressive reviews and box-office, enough to ensure that it will get a full-scale release across the country. If it comes to a theater near you, give it a shot. You won’t be sorry.
GRADE: B+
