Dheepan (2015)

Director: Jacques Audiard

Starring: Jesuthasan Antonythasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine Vinasithamby

Dheepan is a Sri Lankan Tamil warrior who flees to France and ends up working as a caretaker outside Paris.

With Sri Lanka in the grips of a civil war, Sivadhasan wants to flee his country in search of a better life. In order to do so – and for political reasons – he needs a family. He assumes the identity of a dead man named Dheepan, and meets Yalini – who poses as his wife, and Illayaal – who poses as his daughter. Together they flee to France.

Arriving in France, he finds a job as a caretaker, while Yalini accepts a job cooking and cleaning for drug lord, Monsieur Habib. Hardly knowing one another and having to live together as a family, causes tension between them. Their promising new life soon starts falling apart when they realize their new home is in the middle of a conflict zone, with constant fighting and shooting between drug cartels.

‘Dheepan’ is not quite what I expected. It is a bit slow moving, but it was still interesting enough. There were moments when I felt the film should have given more information – on the characters and situations. The performances are excellent. In general, ‘Dheepan’ is worth a watch, but it is not the kind of movie I’d watch again.

In Tamil and French.

Would I watch it again? No.