Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan comes stateside after claiming the 2015 Palme d’Or, a prize well-earned for this masterful, seemingly effortless balancing act of ripped-from-the-headlines narrative with slow-burn psychodrama. Though stylistically similar to politically minded social realists, Audiard never betrays individuality in the name of scoring ideological points. The film neither ignores nor tempers the politics inherent in its tale of refugees in France, having survived their own civil war only to be caught in the middle of gang violence in what was supposed to be their new life.
Dheepan is the story of three strangers in a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee camp who assume the identity of a deceased family—husband, wife and daughter—and use their passports to secure passage to Europe. The “wife,” Yalini (played by Kalieaswari Srinivasan) expects to reach England to reunite with her family, yet has no choice but to go to France with her new “husband,” Sivadhasan (played by Antonythasan Jesuthasan), who assumes the name of the deceased Dheepan, and their assumed daughter, the orphaned Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby).
The three have differing levels of success pretending to be a new person. Dheepan begins work as a caretaker for a housing development that is plagued by criminal activity and gang violence. There are hints at his previous military activity with the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, a part of life he is ready to leave behind, yet as long as his new circumstances remain unstable both domestically and financially in a violent neighborhood, his past cannot help but boil over. Yalini is the least prepared to leave her identity; she sees a future that does not involve her fake family and she is always ready to remind them that they have no blood relation. Nine-year-old orphan Illayaal, meanwhile, is at the mercy of both her new parents and her new country. She is initially afraid of her new school and is shunned by the other girls, but eventually wants to fit in and is forced to ask the emotionally distant Yalini for a kiss like the other children get from their mothers.
Some have viewed Dheepan’s action- packed resolution as inappropriately over the top, counteracting the slow burn of the film’s character study. It is true that the pace quickens as Dheepan and Yalini slowly realize they cannot stay out of the way in their new home. But Audiard has a plan here: Dheepan initially insists that the shootouts are different than the civil war in Sri Lanka. Yalini cannot make that distinction, and, over time, neither can Dheepan. Audiard appears to suggest that problems of inequality and conflict are fundamentally human, even if their manifestation differs from nation to nation. Indeed, the artificial, performative life in the development is not limited to the refugees—one gang member confides in Dheepan that virtually all of the hired muscle comes from elsewhere, making them transplants filling a predetermined role.
Though named after its leading man, Dheepan is every bit an ensemble film that is concerned with everyone’s emotional and psychological journey. Some may find the finale of Dheepan’s one-man rebellion sensationalistic, but whatever your view, it is actually a much more admirable decision by Audiard to allow his subjects to be sympathetic on their own terms without resorting to obvious depictions of the dispossessed as inherently helpless.
Dheepan R, 115 minutes
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