Dheepan

“Did you start believing this story?” asks a baffled Yalini to her fake husband Dheepan. The story is the secret the two share with their “daughter” Illayaal. A story of escape from Sri Lanka’s Civil War towards a less violent future and the inevitable arrival to a neighbourhood of immigrants and refugees in the outskirts of Paris.

The family takes on its new identity in a hope for redemption and a brighter future. But, as the film demonstrates on the surface as well as to the heart, the violence of man against man is inescapable.
As the family struggles to adapt, to learn the language and to not break its façade, it begins to create a bond between one another.

The cinematography conveys the film’s soul, its characters’ facial features, the pain and fear hidden in their eyes, the longing for love and for what was lost. The use of close-ups and long shots is also key to the understanding of the characters’ complexity because it reveals their apparent proximity as emotional distance. Often shot separated by walls or on the other side of the block of flats, Dheepan and Yalini seem to desire something more, while being unable to communicate with each other.

Jacques Audiard has created a striking universe in which he questions the general western outlook on refugees and on how many escapes from violence are not covered by the media.

The actors’ performances are particularly exceptional as Dheepan becomes the Travis Bickle of our days, a simultaneously vengeful and caring anti-hero, struggling, first and foremost with himself.

The Parisian suburb also functions as a universalising space for misfits and underdogs, a space that reminds of Naples’ Scampia with its contained microcosm as the film and TV series Gomorra have portrayed.

Dheepan is a daring film, one of those rare documents that question our way of generalizing, of looking without seeing. Dheepan offers the possibility of redemption reminding us that the love for one another will always open up a second chance.