REVIEW: ‘DHEEPAN,’ ABOUT SRI LANKAN REFUGEES, LOOKS LIKE A PROPHECY

By A. O. SCOTTMAY 5, 2016.-06/05/2016

Jacques Audiard’s “Dheepan,” which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes a year ago, arrives in North American theaters having lost none of the timeliness that was widely noted last May. Screening in the South of France a few months after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, as the Syrian refugee problem intensified across Europe, this story of a makeshift family, tossed from a distant war zone into a French housing project, looked to many festival observers less like a work of cinematic art than like a news bulletin. A year later, as the threat of terrorism and the humanitarian challenge of migration from Africa, Asia and the Middle East have precipitated something of a European identity crisis, Mr. Audiard’s film has acquired an almost prophetic aura.

Jesuthasan Antonythasan in “Dheepan.” Credit Paul Arnaud/Sundance Selects

But while it certainly belongs to a long tradition of muscular, topical screen entertainment — its DNA bears traces of pre- and post-dictatorship Latin American cinema, of the early films of Costa-Gavras, of Old and New Hollywood agitprop — “Dheepan” has more than headlines on its mind. Its title character is in determined flight from political commitment and the violence that accompanies it, and the film is sympathetic to his aspirations. A former Sri Lankan Tamil militant who, it’s suggested, has both witnessed and participated in atrocities, he comes to France in search of peace and quiet and a chance to forget.

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