Civil wars in various parts of Africa and Asia have set off the mass movement of refugees to Europe in the past two decades. Jacques Audiard’s drama, Dheepan, which won the Palme d’Or prize at 2015 Cannes Film Festival and which opens in Canada on May 13, focuses on three Sri Lankans who escape to France as Sri Lanka’s civil war comes to a close in 2009.
The escapees are Dheepan (Antonythasan Jesuthasan), a Tamil Tiger fighter whose family has been killed; Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan), a single woman who yearns for peace and tranquility, and Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby), a nine-year-old orphan who’s enmeshed in their plan to leave embattled Sri Lanka.
Since Dheepan and Yalini can only gain admittance to France by posing as a married couple with a child, they pass off Illayaal as their daughter. Leaving Sri Lanka with the passport of a deceased person, they land in Paris, where they must adjust to their new lives in a dreary, gang-infested apartment building on the outskirts of the city.
A solemn man who rarely cracks a smile, Dheepan earns a living by selling trinkets on the streets of Paris. But after he’s almost arrested by the police, he finds a job as a caretaker in a tenement inhabited by Arab and African immigrants and poor whites. Yalini, fed up with being cooped up in a tiny flat all day, becomes a caregiver.
Illayaal’s “parents” enrol her in a school, where she makes rapid progress in learning French.
The film, which is distinguished by inventive cinematography, succeeds in conveying the sense of disorientation and displacement Dheepan and Yalini feel as they accustom themselves to each other and navigate an alien culture. Yet there are tender moments, such as when Illayaal cries out for attention and love and Yalini offers sexual intimacy to Dheepan.
On balance, though, Dheepan, seethes with violence. The young Arab gangsters who rule over the housing project where Yalini and her “husband” have settled are ruthless killers who will stop at nothing to achieve their objectives.
It’s bitterly ironic and tragic that these Sri Lankan refugees have come so far only to face gunfire and bloodshed yet again. But that’s the reality that Dheepan and Yalini must come to grips with as shots ring out near their building and a local hoodlum and his father are gunned down in broad daylight.
Jesuthasan, a former child soldier with the Tamil Tigers, is superb as Dheepan. But he’s not the only actor who delivers a stunning performance. His co-stars, Srinivasan and Vinasithamby, both acquit themselves with elan.
This gritty movie paints a plausible, sometimes heart-rending picture of dark-complexioned strangers in a strange land trying to cope with adversity and cultural dissonance. It’s a microcosm of the travails facing new refugees in Europe today.