‘Dheepan’: Immigrant drama starts strong, takes turn for worse

SHARE ‘Dheepan’: Immigrant drama starts strong, takes turn for worse
dsc_2199.jpg

Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby) poses as the daughter of Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) to escape war-torn Sri Lanka in “Dheepan.” | SUNDANCE SELECTS

For three-quarters of its running time, “Dheepan” feels like something special. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2015 Cannes film festival, the meditative drama is a bountiful take on the immigrant experience, plunging three refugees of the Sri Lankan civil war into an ungentle France, where it seems the trio has fled one war zone only to end up in another. It’s serious, soulful and smart, and then French filmmaker Jacques Audiard quite literally drives a flaming car into the narrative and blows the whole thing up.

A defeated Sri Lankan Tamil fighter assumes the name Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) to flee his war-torn country. It’s a dead man’s identity, and with it come fake wife Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and fake daughter Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby), an orphaned 9-year-old girl plucked out of a refugee camp. It’s a psychologically harrowing subterfuge, but it comes with papers and passports that get the ad hoc family to France, where they must continue to play the part to avoid deportation.

They’re faced with an immigrant experience that’s only typical on the surface. Dheepan is hired as the caretaker of a housing complex, and Yalini to cook, clean and care for an ailing older man who lives there. Illayaal struggles at school, where she’s placed in a special needs class until she can learn the language. Common experiences, but threaded here with danger. The housing complex is overrun with gangsters, dangerous and armed men who don’t care for Dheepan’s quiet scrutiny.

The dangers are internal, too. It turns out war can’t be fled so easily. It continues to rage inside Dheepan, Yalini and Illayaal, who find they can’t force love. They learn each other, often unwillingly. Illayaal is the hungriest for affection, Yalini the most guarded and afraid to give it; when she drops Illayaal off at school, the girl uses it as an opportunity to force affection, asking for a kiss on the cheek to fit in.

Dheepan believes the most fervently in the fiction, and needs to; a traumatic past is gradually revealed, and his psyche teems with the ghosts of his former life. When love doesn’t come, he’s desperate enough to try to force it.

The stunning character work is accented with moments of pure cinematic poetry. Audiard uses the camera like a paintbrush, composing lyrical interludes and disorienting transitions with the power to leave you breathless. It’s all so quietly brilliant – until it isn’t.

Armed with a machete, a screwdriver and a Molotov cocktail, Dheepan derails the film in spectacular fashion. What was a stunning drama turns into a PTSD fever dream rotten with B-movie schlock. It’s a shocking denouement, but not in the way Audiard intended.

In 2009’s “A Prophet” and elsewhere, Audiard has masterfully incorporated violence into subtle dramas, stretching conflict until characters break in just the right place. Not here. There’s no grace to the abrupt transition from drama to crime thriller, and the ending feels like a copout. All that beautiful conflict, and it just blows up?

One wishes the drama that preceded it had been a little sloppier, a little trashier, so it wouldn’t feel like such a waste.

★★1⁄2

Sundance Selects presents a film directed by Jacques Audiard and written by Audiard, Noé Debré and Thomas Bidegain. In French and Tamil with English subtitles. Running time: 110 minutes. Rated R (for violence, language and brief sexuality/nudity). Opens Friday at Landmark Century Centre.

The Latest
Despite getting into foul trouble, which limited him to just six minutes in the second half, Shannon finished with 29 points, five rebounds and two assists.
Cowboy hats, bell-bottoms and boots were on full display Thursday night as fans lined up for the first of his three sold-out shows.
The incident occurred about 3:40 p.m. near Minooka. The horse was successfully placed back into the trailer, and the highway reopened about 40 minutes later. No injuries were reported.
The Hawks conceded the game’s only two goals within the first seven minutes and were shut out for the 12th time this season in a 2-0 defeat Thursday.