Dheepan **** (2015, Jesuthasan Antonythasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine Vinasithamby, Vincent Rottiers) – Movie Review

The startling 2015 feature film Dheepan from Jacques Audiard, the maker of A Prophet and Rust and Bone, is quite an eye-opener and an emotional ride, as well as a real impressive piece of film-making, winning the Palme d’Or in official competition at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

Jesuthasan Antonythasan stars as Tamil freedom fighter Dheepan, who flees Sri Lanka with him two unrelated strangers – a woman and a little girl –  to claim asylum in Paris. Dheepan gets a job as caretaker of a run-down housing block in the suburbs and tries to build a new life for his fake wife and daughter. His ‘wife’  Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) gets a job looking after old, sick Monsieur Habib (Faouzi Bensaïdi), at whose house she encounters the menacing young Brahim (Vincent Rottiers).

As violence breaks out on a daily basis in the housing block, the film builds steadily but intensely to a spectacular conclusion as Dheepan reconnects with his fighter instincts.

This very interesting situation becomes a totally involving, gripping and quite excellent film, tensely and imaginatively handled by Audiard. The two main performances couldn’t be better, quietly powerful and so naturalistic that they have a documentary realism. So, most often, does the film, but sometimes Audiard feels like showing off in ‘it’s only a movie’ flourishes, most notably at the climax. He shows off quite brilliantly.

Dheepan was nominated for nine César awards in 2016 and won none, and was nominated for the 2017 BAFTA Film Award for Best Film Not in the English Language, and failed to win.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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