While films about immigrants in French banlieues have practically become a genre of French cinema the quality of the performances of the actors, especially Antonythasan Jesuthasan who plays the former Tamil soldier, Dheepan and Audiard’s masterful direction raise this film to another level.
Jesuthasan who gives a truly outstanding performance has apparently drawn partially on his own experiences as a former child soldier with the rebel fighters, the Tamil Tigers, until he fled Sri Lanka and made his way to France. He eventually became an acclaimed playwright, essayist and novelist and this is his first major film role as an actor.
The film opens as Sivadhasan the rebel fighter during the last days of the civil war in Sri Lanka decides to flee. We next move to a refugee centre where Sidvadhasan links up with Yalini played by Kalieaswari Srinivasan. They quickly grab a young orphaned child, Illayaal played by Claudine Vinasithamby so that they can assume the identities of a dead husband, wife and child and use their passports to claim asylum in France. In the process Sivdhasan become Dheepan and an instant family is created.
After obtaining temporary French visas, the newly minted “family” ends up in a typical Paris banlieue and Dheepan gets a job as a live-in caretaker in a large block of flats. Barely able to speak French Dheepan and Yalini take up their new lives in this concrete jungle where Dheepan realises he will still have to fight for his existence to survive. The neighbourhood is run by drug traffickers and gangs and a sense of menace hovers over the characters and lurks in the shadows.
The sense of disorientation the family experiences is both connected to their surroundings and to their relationships with each other. The young Yalini has no interest in playing the dutiful wife and mother and Illayaal needs the love and support of real parents that neither Dheepan nor Yalini are interested in giving.
Yalini meanwhile gets a job as a home health worker for an elderly man in the apartment complex which seems to also be the headquarters for the local drug gangs. The plot thickens when Yalini becomes attracted to Brahim played by Vincent Rottiers who is one of the drug gang leaders. Violence inevitably follows.
Audiard co-wrote the script with his regulars Thomas Bidegain and Noe Debre and the script is finely nuanced and emotionally gripping if perhaps not up to his earlier triumphs A Prophet or Rust and Bone. The fact that most of the dialogue is in Tamil will make it more difficult for the film to garner a large audience but the powerful acting coupled with Audiard’s reputation as one of France’s leading directors will no doubt win it a wide European audience.
Credits (France)
Directed by Jacques Audiard
Cast: Jesuthasan Antonythasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine Vinasithamby, Vincent Rottiers, Marc Zinga
