Dämonen und Wunder - Dheepan

"Men and women are immigrants in each other's worlds." Yakov Smirnoff

While the media is awash with stories of displaced persons, especially in Europe and Asia, the engrossing film, Dheepan, depicts the struggles of a small "family" from Sri Lanka that could as easily stand for emigrants anywhere. The titular hero (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) is a former Tamil Tiger trying to leave his violent past by emigrating first to France, then to England.

The fact that the 1983-2009 Sri Lankan Civil War is closing, with Tamil losing, helps to propel the story and give credence to his flight. The story is fascinating as Deephan joins with a woman and a young girl, both previously unknown to him, to leave the country seeming to be a family. Just watching the three maneuver themselves out of India to a Parisian suburb is drama enough, but writer-director Jacques Audiard carefully shows how the new family gradually becomes a functioning, loving trio.

However, it's not at all easy as Dheepan's new job is as caretaker for a housing complex that has a drug operation in one part of it. Although Dheepan tries to stay out of the way, the old Tiger surfaces, and he must fight for his independence as well as the safety and trust of his "wife," Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan).

That fight for family love and survival becomes just as compelling as the struggle of the Tamil Tigers for independence in Northern Sri Lanka. What makes this Cannes Palme d'Or winner so emotionally magnetizing is the quiet way the characters grab hold of your affection, in a sense inching their way into your heart because of the sincerity of their purpose and the charisma of the actors.

Besides the microcosmic attachment to a family in progress, the story, again quietly, references ethnic challenges worldwide as Yalini dons a headscarf to fit into the predominantly Muslim population, an artifice similar to her faking being wife to Deephan and mother to Illavaal (Claudine Vinasithamby). Yet there is nothing deceptive about the power of this story to make universal the need to find a home, and the concomitant importance of a nurturing love.

Reviewed by Larry Gleeson. Viewed during 2015 AFI FEST.

"Dheepan," is the latest work by director Jacques Audiard. Audiard has to his credits the critically acclaimed and well nominated films "Rust and Bone"(2012), and "A Prophet"(2009). "Dheepan," is written by Audiard, Thomas Bidegain and Noe Debre', and tells the story of a Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger, called Dheepan. Dheepan is played by Indian actor, Antonythasan Jesuthasan.

Winner of the coveted Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, "Deephan," is a visual feast beginning in the jungles of Sri Lanka and the ensuing shots depicting Dheepan's cultural transformation in the night streets of Paris. Epinine Momenceau provides the cinematography in a compelling manner along with a nicely done soundtrack by Nicolas Jarr.

As the film opens we see Dheepan and fellow Tamil warriors placing dry palm branches over a funeral pyre. Dheepan place his military fatigues on top and lights the fire. Sri Lanka is mired in a bloody civil war. Dheepan along with an unknown woman called Yalini, played by Kalieaswari Srinivasan, and a young orphan girl, Illayaal, played by Claudine Vinasithamby, decide to flee the strife together and set out for a new life in the suburbs of Paris posing as a displaced refugee family. With the inventiveness of a well versed interpreter, Dheepan and Yalini pass their social services interview and find employment as caretakers of a not so well-to-do housing project and one of it's incoherent inhabitants.To complicate matters, Illayaal is having difficulties at school, Dheepan is contacted by a Tamil warrior who insists Dheepan continue the fight for freedom, and Yalini is becoming attracted to the gang leader nephew of her incoherent charge. This is all on top of the deeper humanistic component of three strangers living together as a family in a small apartment in an entirely foreign culture.

Soon, however, Dheepan and his refugee family begin to pull together as they experience renewed forms of violence. Their challenging suburban life becomes increasingly dangerous due to drug activity and an ensuing turf war that hits too close to home. Dheepan, working primarily as an janitor, takes a stand and declares a no-fire zone between his apartment building and the adjacent housing project much to the disbelief and chagrin of the well-armed gang members. As the turf war breaks out and spills over into the "safe zone," Dheepan shifts gears and his switch is flipped. He becomes an uber-soldier defending and protecting what has become his. This is an extraordinary transformation as he resorts to survival skills presumably developed as a Tamil freedom fighter. The action sequences heightens the drama in its fragmented and rather hazy segments as Dheepan's deep and powerful emotional chords propel him through the violence and chaos until victory is his.

All in all, I found "Dheepan," to be a very moving film with its riveting action sequences contrasting with its earlier tender, more human sequences. Audiard takes a very timely topic, the displaced refugee, and embodies him and her, with very human characteristics. Highly Recommended.

Watched this prestigious Palme d'Or winner in the local art house cinema Zawya, it is French auteur Jacques Audiard's seventh feature film, who is on a hot streak in the past decade, from THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED (2005), to A PROPHET (2009), then RUST AND BONE (2012), now finally DHEEPHAN hits the home run in his motherland.

To escaping from the living hell of a defeated war in Sri Lanka, a Tamil freedom fighter Dheepan (Antonythasan, who was a real-life boy solider of Tamil Tiger before fleeing to France), forges a family with Yalini (Srinivasan), a young woman in her early twenties and Illayaal (Vinasithamby), a nine-year-old girl, which facilitates the process of seeking asylum in Europe, and they end up in a Le Pré, a suburban area of Paris (although Yalini hopes to go to the Great Britain, where her cousin is) where anarchy is still held rampant among local gangsters. In spite of their language debacle, Dheepan becomes a caretaker of a derelict housing block and he also finds a job for Yalini, as a hourly maid to attend to a senior uncle of the gangster member Brahim (Rottiers), who has just been released from the penitentiary for probation, whereas Illayaal enrols in the local school where she has a tough time to blend in.

Paris, even the suburban area, should be a safe haven for the makeshift family taking flight from a war zone, but in Audiard's conception, France is far cry from a paradise for immigrants and refugees, hooliganism and gang war threaten Dheepan and his family's life almost on a daily basis, which is an ever so familiar situation for them, as if the shadows of war have tracked them from their native country to another continent, no exit is on the horizon, everywhere seems to be a dead-end, life is almost the same, worthless, in spite of being accommodated in a quite comfy apartment and earning a self-sufficient wages, they can be dispatched by the flying bullets any time on the streets, even under the broad daylight. Sooner or later, the straining mental stress will implode, especially for Yalini, whose working condition becomes increasingly precarious since she deals with gangster members first-hand, a highly-stylish set piece where Dheepan single-handedly takes on the droogs to save Yalini, with unusual subjective camera angle and heightened slo- motion shots aiming persistently to the waist-below, it is Audiard's intemperate stunt to impress after holding it back for a long time, nevertheless it deficiently appeases what viewers anticipate (especially when Dheepan's provocative behaviour of drawing the line between warring gangsters receives no personal danger to him or whatsoever) - to exaggerate Dheephan's "heroic act" as if he is the action hero who is capable to calmly finishing off his enemies one by one with great panache, is too much a stretch, even for someone with his battlefield background, since his life is too insignificant to matter under the radical situations which Audiard insists to lead us on. So is the ambiguous happy ending in England, a dream too perfect to be true which contradicts the harsh realism which Audiard intently fabricates.

Where all three main actors are non-professionals, it is pleasing to watch a tangible bond has been built between Yalini and Brahim, lost in translation, they don't understand each other's language, but the beguiling charm and draw between total strangers has reached its well-received receptor without put civil decency at its expense. In spite of being an allegorical account of a seemingly ordinary person's unexpected hidden depths, DHEEPHAN arrives topically in the current muddy waters of immigrants and war refugees in Europe, it leaves the impression of a self-justifying excuse to warn those unfortunately masses, but maybe they are not deeming Europe as the promised land, for them, any place other than their levelled home, is an egress from danger and poverty, so, at such desperation, it is well worth it.

One particularly telling scene of Audiard's poetic creativity is when the location transitions from Sri Lanka to Paris, the blurry fluorescent light slowly reveals itself being generated from a plastic hat which Dheepan wears when he is hawking on the street of Paris with other immigrants, such sleight-of-hand is mesmerising, alas, there is just not enough of them in this Palme d'Or crowner.

Dheepan (the first leading role for Jesuthasan Antonythasan) is a Tamil fighter. He flees war-torn Sri Lanka with Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby), posing as his wife and daughter , hoping that they will make it easier for him to get asylum in Europe . The makeshift family arrives in France and Dheepan finds work as a caretaker for an apartment building that is also a drug front . As Dheepan finds work as the caretaker of a run-down housing block in the suburbs ruled by a nasty gangster (Vincent Rottiers) . But the daily violence he faces off quickly reopens his war wounds , and Dheepan is forced to reconnect with his warrior's instincts to protect his new family .

Jacques Audiard's follow-up to Rust and Bone took home the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival . This thoughtful film has emotion , intense drama , thrills , political events and violence . Dheepan thrives on silence and it results to be a French film shot nearly entirely in Tamil language . A nearly wordless opening showing the eponymous character's tragic departure , the desperate meeting of Dheepan, Yalini, and Illayaal, and the voyage west is particularly effective . Audiard jumps smoothly through time and forces the audience to catch up with only the barest context, producing a marvelously suspenseful prologue . Good performance from Jesuthasan Antonythasan as Dheepan , a Sri Lankan Tamil warrior who flees to France and ends up working as a caretaker outside Paris . Jesuthasan was a boy soldier with the Tamil Tigers before fleeing Sri Lanka for France, just like the character he plays in the movie ; he is a writer, novelist and political activist in real-life . Excellent female lead actors Kalieaswari Srinivasan and Claudine Vinasithamby , both of whom never acted in a feature film before . Special mention for Vincent Rottiers as a tough mobster . Being first feature film of cinematographer Éponine Momenceau who creates an evocative as well as atmospheric cinematography and composer Nicolas Jaar who composes an adequate score . Being shot on location in Mandapam, Tamil Nadu, Rameshwaram, Tamil Nadu, Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India and La Coudraie, Poissy, Yvelines, France .

The motion picture was well directed by Jacques Audiard who gets phenomenal interpretations from the three leads , who are all essentially non-actors . Audiard is a good French writer and filmmaker . In the eighties he wrote the screenplays of some successful movies like "Mortelle Randonnee" (1983), "Reveillon Chez Bob" (1984), "Saxo" (1987), "Frequence Meurtre" (1988) and "Grosse Fatigue" (1994). Most of those films were thrillers directed by prestigious filmmakers like Claude Miller and Michel Blanc . He also directed some well received short movies . Thanks to the success of those movies he was able, in 1994, to raise up the money to make his first movie "Regarde Les Hommes Tomber" starred by Mathieu Kassovitz . Kassovitz also became the star of his second movie "Un Heros Tres Discret" released in the Festival de Cannes in 1996 where it won the award for best screenplay. In 2001 he made his third movie "Sur Mes Levres" about a love story between two outsiders . His last movie, "De Battre Mon Coeur Sest Arrête" was released in the Berlin festival of 2005 . His greatest success was ¨A prophet¨ . With those movies, Audiard has become the new master of the "polar" or French thriller and inheritor of others great French directors like Jean-Pierre Melville and Henri Georges-Clouzot .

In our review for Robert Guédiguian's wonderful film "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1852006/reviews-6) we raised the question whether Art should be an imitation of life or whether it should be the other way around. The advocates of realism will make the first choice since, in their opinion, life is full of ugliness that Art must faithfully portray. As is often the case, the artist does not even distinguish between realism and pessimism. In the case of cinema, in particular, the audience must leave the theater full of dark thoughts and feelings of vanity; happy ending is a taboo and a positive message should be hard to find. Idealism, on the other hand, reserves a more noble and ambitious role for Art by creating high standards of human character, thus offering psychological, ideological and aesthetic motivation for man to overcome the inherent weaknesses of his nature and morally elevate himself by striving to reach these standards.

Guédiguian's film masterfully balances between these two opposite philosophical trends. One could hardly say anything less about Jacques Audiard's "Dheepan" (Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival). In the first place, the subject – immigration to Europe from war-torn places of the Third World – is so timely that the film almost acquires the character of a documentary. The audience, however, progressively witnesses a marvelous transformation from the harsh reality of human survival to the final triumph of human moral exaltation!

Here is the beginning of the story:

"Dheepan" is a freedom fighter of the "Tamil Tigers" in the Sri Lankan Civil War. The war approaches its end and defeat of the revolutionaries is imminent. Dheepan, whose entire family was lost in the war, decides to flee the country together with a woman and a little girl – two persons previously unknown to him as well as to each other – in the hope that, by pretending that they are a family, it would be easier for them to claim asylum somewhere in Europe. Arriving in Paris, the "family" seeks temporary housing while Dheepan tries to earn some money by selling little things under the nose of the Police. Finally, he finds a permanent job as a caretaker in a building block somewhere in the suburbs. Although the place is miserable and, moreover, is a den of unlawful activities, Dheepan works hard to build a new life for him and his new family...

The craftsmanship of the narrative lies in the wonderful balance between the hard realism of the subject and the cinematic poetry that permeates the film from beginning to end. This narrative carefully and skillfully avoids the traps of over-sentimentalism and political didacticism, as well as the temptation of sanctification or demonization of the various characters, as such oversimplifications would undoubtedly undermine the artistic result. The main heroes, in particular, are not a priori "good". They discover the good parts of their own nature as the story progresses, thus developing as human beings in the process.

It is precisely this miracle of character revelation and moral elevation in front of the viewer's eyes that makes cinema such a wonderful art, after all. And, even if it seems too idealistic to be true, this miracle is far from representing a utopia!