Dheep­an

There’s an amaz­ing trick shot ear­ly on in Jacques Audiard’s sur­prise Palme d’Or win­ner Dheep­an where our epony­mous hero (Jesuthasan Antonythasan), hav­ing man­aged to flee from Sri Lan­ka (where he was engaged as a foot sol­dier in the Tamil Tigers) to France, begins a new life sell­ing nov­el­ty trin­kets from a suitcase.

All we see is flash­ing blue and red lights on a blan­ket of deep black, and it looks for a moment as if an aero­plane is land­ing at night. In terms of con­ti­nu­ity, it would seem a whol­ly log­i­cal image. But it’s actu­al­ly the LEDs from plas­tic rab­bit ears worn by a trio of ven­dors who go on to hec­tor din­ers in a restau­rant. This brand of high style is an Audi­ard trade­mark, but this new film mutes his knee­jerk recourse to visu­al flash to make way for a more seri­ous and time­ly explo­ration of the immi­grant experience.

Dheep­an is, for most of its run­time, a sat­is­fy­ing­ly even-hand­ed and non-judg­men­tal sto­ry of cul­ture shock. It’s not an overt­ly polit­i­cal film, though Audi­ard makes it easy to place his char­ac­ters and their actions against the back­drop of con­tem­po­rary events. For the most part, it sets its stall as being remark­ably pro-immi­gra­tion, offer­ing rea­son after rea­son why healthy West­ern economies should do their utmost to help peo­ple from polit­i­cal­ly volatile locales. But is offer­ing aid enough? What’s the point in amass­ing funds when there’s no-one to help with that daunt­ing task of leap­ing across the cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal chasm? Self-empow­er­ment is one thing, but are we real­ly aware of all the obsta­cles that lay in the way of those escap­ing vio­lence and persecution?

Along­side his fake wife Illayaal (Kalieaswari Srini­vasan) and fake daugh­ter Yali­ni (Clau­dine Vin­a­sitham­by), hasti­ly assem­bled to fit the pro­files of a stack of pass­ports whose own­ers have no fur­ther use for them (i.e. their corpses are like­ly fuel for a large bon­fire), the ill-matched trio are placed in a grub­by sub­ur­ban hous­ing ten­e­ment which plays host to reg­u­lar bouts of gang-relat­ed gunplay.

At one point, a line is paint­ed between two ten­e­ments as the ter­ri­to­r­i­al piss­ings of goons with too much spare time begin to stink up the place. Yet they all get on with the tasks at hand, ​“hus­band” tak­ing on the role of care­tak­er, ​“moth­er” the role of social car­er and ​“daugh­ter” as inquis­i­tive school­girl. There’s a brac­ing hon­esty to the way Audi­ard presents his char­ac­ters as earn­ing the trust of the local com­mu­ni­ty as they work tire­less­ly to improve lives; more inter­est­ing, though, is the strained and con­fus­ing rela­tion­ships between the two phoney lovers.

A ner­vous ten­sion aris­es around how long Audi­ard can keep all this good work up, how long he’s going to be able to rein in his grandiose ten­den­cies. Yet, as pri­or expe­ri­ence might have hint­ed, things go major­ly down­hill in its botched final act. Minor key obser­va­tion gives way to hulk­ing plot-twists and blood-sprayed shoot-outs, which gives us a chance to see Dheepan’s old self emerge once more, tor­tur­ing, maim­ing and killing as he did when part of a rebel mili­tia. This doesn’t mere­ly bring a cum­ber­some tonal shift, but undoes a lot of the high­ly nuanced and enlight­ened polit­i­cal dis­course from ear­li­er on. Almost.