Dheepan

Jacques Audiard's award-winning film about three Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka's civil war who escape to France by posing as a family is a drama of alienation, assimilation, and survival. Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan, a non-actor and former child soldier) flees the Tamil Tiger guerillas by posing as the father of a displaced family and he has to continue the deception with his "wife" Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and 9-year-old "daughter" Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby) when they are brought to Paris and placed in an impoverished suburb where he works as a caretaker for apartments overrun with drug gangs. The three are more like business partners than family as they settle in to their new existence, with Dheepan insisting that Yalini take care of Illayaal (who is miserable at school and emotionally disconnected from both "parents"), but over time they develop compassion and concern for one another and slowly the adults start to act more like parents. When drug violence erupts in the complex and puts his family in danger, Dheepan reverts back to his guerilla training and takes a stand against the gang. But that is only a part of this drama about outsiders dropped into a new culture and struggling to assimilate. A touching tale of strangers becoming a family, this Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or winner is highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)