Dheepan (2015)

Director: Jacques Audiard
Writers: Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Noé Debré
DOP: Eponine Momenceau
Cast: Antonythasan Jesuthasan, Kalieswari Srinivasan, Claudine Vinasithamby
Languages: Tamil, French

Dheepan is a Srilankan Tamil warrior who flees to France and ends up working as a caretaker of flats outside Paris. Dheepan is not his real name and he had fled Srilanka with a lady and a girl posing as the deceased Dheepan family so that they could use their passports.

Film doesn't delve deep into the nuances of LTTE conflict in Srilanka as it anyway assumes the French audience doesn't know much about it and needn't be given too much details. The atrocities committed by the Government forces during the last days of the conflict did make Worldwide headlines. All these kinds of ethnic conflicts do have a universal language. The film did come out a time when the refugee crisis in Europe was making headlines and it earned Audiard a Palme d'Or at Cannes.

The apartment projects that Dheepan is working in is a Banlieue like setup and largely occupied by other non-first generation migrants. It is also beset with first-world problems like drug related gang wars. Same time Dheepan is also dealing with the fake family that he now has and his fake wife is reluctant to invest much into it. It is an engrossing watch from the get go and is difficult to describe the tone of the film. It basically is about how Dheepan and his 'family' integrates into the French society even though at its margins. People might find problems with how it ended as some have interpreted it as Audiard juxtaposing civil war in Srilanka with the gang wars in Europe. I saw it more as him showing the latter very much as a first world problem rather than equating both of their scales.

PS: It was indeed very strange to see a Tamil language film set in France.

Rating: 4/5

Un héros très discret (A Self-Made Hero) (1996)

Director: Jacques Audiard
Writers:  Jean-Francois Deniau, Alain Le Henry, Jacques Audiard
Cast:       Mathieu Kassovitz, Anouk Grinberg, Sandrine Kiberian, Jean-Louis Trintignant
Language: French

Set in France at the end of World War Two Albert Dehousse finds out his father wasn't a war hero and his mother is a collaborator. He leaves his wife and goes to Paris. Gradually he inveigles himself with the resistance movement by inventing stories about his own past in the movement. They trust him and he helps them to trace collaborators. 

Jean-Louis Trintignant plays the role of old Albert and do some narration while Mathieu Kassovitz, who made his name as the director of La Haine, plays the role of young Albert. This period in French history had some interesting dynamics as France didn't offer much resistance when Germans invaded them (I don't blame/taunt them for that because Germany was much stronger) and a period of four years of German occupation followed. When it ended, naturally there was animosity towards those who were considered to be collaborators. I don't totally understand much of their hatred. You can justify some of it if it is indeed directed against people who actively helped Germans in crushing the French resistance but things like baying for those who had relationships with German soldiers are bang out of order and reflects their own insecurities partly related to the emasculation that they must have felt due to occupation. Film is kind of a satirical take on this with subtlety and it kind of reminded me of 'Amelie', a terribly overrated piece of shit film. It was Audiard's second film as director, after which it took him until 2001 to come out with 'Read My Lips' as a fully evolved director with his own characteristic style.  

Overall the film is a very good watch even though you don't feel like it is indeed an Audiard film. That might have got to do with the fact that it is an adapted screenplay from a novel with minimal contribution from Audiard. He won Palme d'Or at Cannes with his latest film Dheepan this year and I can't wait to watch it. One could see 'A Self-Made Hero' as a light film set during a complex period when much rewriting of history was taking place.

Rating: 3.5/5

                                                                      

De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone) (2012)

Director: Jacques Audiard

Writers:  Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Craig Davidson

Cast:      Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts, Armand Verdure

Language:French

Put in charge of his young son, Ali leaves Belgium for Antibes to live with his sister and her husband as a family. Ali's bond with Stephanie, a killer whale trainer, grows deeper after Stephanie suffers a horrible accident.

As someone put it, it is a love story between a mentally handicapped man and a physically handicapped woman. With the premise ripe for wallowing in misery and ample scope for melodrama, the film is full of surprises. Another masterpiece from Audiard,  even though some might find the ending not in sync with the overall theme of the film. But I loved it.

Rating: 4.5/5