“French director Jacques Audiard's latest film stars previously unknown leads from Sri Lanka and India, and is almost entirely in the Tamil language. Its boldness and its political will to shake up the introversion of the French film world were no doubt factors in its winning last year’s Palme d’Or in Cannes. It’s about a family of immigrants newly arrived in France – only they’re really strangers huddling under a flag of convenience to leave Sri Lanka and find a new life. Yalini is a woman who enlists a young girl to play her daughter, while “husband” Dheepan is a militant with the recently defeated Tamil Tigers. French social services billet them in a dilapidated banlieue estate, where Dheepan works as a caretaker – and where a drug war is about to erupt.
“The film is superbly acted by its central trio. Overall, the Audiard touch is unmistakable: grittily photographed, the film characteristically evokes a deep-textured universe of dirt, debris and squalor. But the abrasive realism is tempered with dream-like images.
“The film is utterly credible and gripping.” - The Guardian
