‘Dheepan’ at the French Film Festival

One of the highlights of the French Film Festival currently running at Palace Electric theatres in New Acton. Written and directed by Jacques Audiard, and winner of the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015, Dheepan is an intimate portrayal of the journey that three Tamils make from Sri Lanka to Paris.

Part of what makes the film so captivating is the fact that Jesuthasan Antonythasan, the lead actor who plays Dheepan, had a life very similar to the one he portrays.

In the film, Dheepan is a former Tamil Tiger and child soldier who is fleeing that world after the war cost him his whole family. Antonythasan reportedly led a very similar life to this, and is now an author and political activist.

Dheepan, along with Yalini, a young woman (Kalieaswari Srinivasan), and Illayaal, an orphan (Claudine Vinasithamby), leave Sri Lanka and enter France using fake passports, pretending to be a family. The three refugees then attempt to make a life in a rough boarding lodge on the outskirts of Paris.

What follows is a story of renewal, fear and immense challenge. While navigating barriers such as language, culture and the past, the three must also deal with the fact that they begin to feel like a ‘real’ family, despite the complete falsity of the story.

Dheepan has a voyeuristic edge; the cinematography seems designed to give the audience as ‘real’ an experience as possible. Shots inside the family’s house, peering around doorways and zooming closely during moments such as sleep and conflict, particularly give this effect. .

The other interesting part of the film is the use of language. Dheepan is a French film that actually includes very little French; it is mainly Tamil that is spoken. However, the few times where there is French dialogue, we as the audience do not get subtitles.

This is to help us experience what it would be like as a person entering a new country with no understanding of the native language; it simply sounds like a wall of sound.

This mechanism is very clever, as it immerses the viewer further into the film, intensifying the experience and helping one empathise with the character’s cause.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Dheepan. It left me with a real sense of empathy, and a new appreciation for the plight of refugees and those seeking a new life, on multiple levels. It is an important, raw film that is worth seeing by anybody who calls themselves a humanitarian.

By Helena Game