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Title: Dämonen und Wunder - Dheepan (2015)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Jesuthasan Antonythasan | ... | ||
| Kalieaswari Srinivasan | ... | ||
| Claudine Vinasithamby | ... | ||
| Vincent Rottiers | ... |
Brahim
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Faouzi Bensaïdi | ... |
Monsieur Habib
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| Marc Zinga | ... |
Youssouf
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Bass Dhem | ... |
Azziz
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Franck Falise | ... |
Le gardien du Hall C
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Joséphine de Meaux | ... |
La directrice de l'école
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| Jean-Baptiste Pouilloux | ... |
Le juriste au foyer
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Nathan Anthonypillai | ... |
L'interprète
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Vasanth Selvam | ... |
Colonel Cheran
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Kartik Krishnan | ... |
Le faussaire au Sri Lanka
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Rudhra | ... |
La femme du camp de réfugié
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Tassadit Mandi | ... |
La dame dans l'escalier
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Dheepan is a Tamil freedom fighter, a Tiger. In Sri Lanka, the Civil War is reaching its end, and defeat is near. Dheepan decides to flee, taking with him two strangers - a woman and a little girl - hoping that they will make it easier for him to claim asylum in Europe. Arriving in Paris, the 'family' moves from one temporary home to another until Dheepan finds work as the caretaker of a run-down housing block in the suburbs. He works to build a new life and a real home for his 'wife' and his 'daughter', but the daily violence he confronts quickly reopens his war wounds, and Dheepan is forced to reconnect with his warrior's instincts to protect the people he hopes will become his true family. Written by Polly_Kat
Call me curmudgeonly if you like, but I found DHEEPAN to be a rather slight tale using obvious symbolism to make its political and psychological points.
Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan) is a Tamil Tiger forced out of Sri Lanka and settled by the French government as an asylum seeker in one of the less salubrious Parisian suburbs. He claims to be married to Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and to have a daughter (Claudine Vinasithamby), but this turns out to be a convenient lie, guaranteeing him a place to live. Dheepan gets a job as a janitor, responsible for cleaning most of the apartments on the estate. Despite his best attempts to fit in, the experience of civil war proves too traumatic for him, affecting his mental state and driving him into an orgy of violent retribution at the end.
Director Jacques Audiard's representation of the dystopian estate with its gang warfare and perpetual threat of crime is not much different from that portrayed in LA HAINE (1995). Most of the residents are immigrants from North Africa or the Middle East, so it might be argued with justification that the film perpetuates racist stereotypes of "the other" as somehow threatening the civilized status quo.
Dheepan's state of mind is signaled by some fairly obvious symbolism - for example, a close-up of an elephant suggesting that unpleasant memories can never be forgotten. His eventual descent into violence seems illogical in terms of what has gone before; but perhaps this is what the experience of battle does to people. On the other hand, the film does include footage of Sri Lankan rituals - for example, a Buddhist religious celebration followed by a picnic - so it could be argued that director Audiard once again associates the Other with strangeness and irrationality.
In light of current events, especially those taking place in Paris, it might be argued that DHEEPAN serves a negative rather than a positive purpose. While suggesting that the experience of war causes trauma that can never be dealt with successfully, the film almost exclusively associates that trauma with the immigrant. The only way to remove that trauma is to treat them in hospital or expel them from the country, a measure that would certainly satisfy the political right, but might not be acceptable to most believers in the democratic ideal.
The film won the Palme D'Or at the 2015 Cannes Festival. Perhaps this was due to its political content: at last a director had the guts to deal with the immigrant experience in an honest yet forceful manner. But perhaps recent political events have overtaken the film, and hence changed our impressions of it.