Dheepan

After having won two Zazie D’or (one in 2009 for Un Prophète and the other one in 2012 for De Rouille et d’os), Jacques Audiard has finally received a well-deserved Palme D’Or at this year Cannes Film Festival for his latest work, Dheepan. 
I was very lucky: for the first time at the Festival in my whole life, the first movie I was able to see was this one. 
On Friday, May 22 at 11.30 am. 
Such a great time of the day to see a movie: the sun of the Riviera outside and the new movie of my favourite European film-maker inside. 
How could I ask for more?

Dheepan, a Tamil warrior from Sri-Lanka who is sick of the war and would like to change his life, manages to leave his country under a false identity and pretending he’s got a family (a wife and a daughter). In reality, the two women are two complete strangers coming from the same refugee camp: the girl is an orphan, and the young woman is trying to reach a cousin who lives in England. The three arrive in France and Dheepan, who declares to have been tortured in his own country, finds a job as a caretaker of few buildings in the Parisian banlieu. None of them speak French, they don’t know each other, and the place is hostile, so things at the beginning are pretty tough, but Dheepan, Yalini and Illayaal, who are willing to have a better life, try their best to succeed. When things seem getting better, Dheepan’s past and the gloomy reality of their present, hit back in a bad way.
War, unfortunately, is not over yet…

Audiard’s cinema is a dark fairy-tale.
His characters are always struggling against something or someone, they have to suffer, they have to go through a lot (metaphorical and physical pain, emotional crisis, solitude) to finally arrive at the end of the tunnel and see the light. But it is worth it, because at the end of this tough path, they are different human beings. They have grown up. They’re better or - at least - they have found a better life.
From a young and almost-innocent petit-voyou that in jail transforms himself into the new leader of the whole prison, to a woman who has to learn how to survive without an important part of herself, to three perfect strangers who have to understand how to be a family and how to survive in an unknown and unwelcoming country, Audiard’s heroes always teach us a lesson of great humanity.

The director’s camera is constantly at their side. 
Audiard’s way of filming is a a pure joy for the eyes: the camera seems to caress Dheepan’s face, to follow him in his discovery of a new world, a world that sometimes looks too familiar to this man: when his past comes back, when violence takes over, when the drug dealers behaviour reminds him of the Sri-Lanka warriors’one.
Audiard’s France is not a country for old men, that’s for sure.
It is a pretty gloomy place where the mixture of culture doesn’t seem to have produced nice results, where poor fight against other poor, where the ugliness of social housing reflects the ugliness of human people living into them.

Dheepan is a movie of subtle understatement.
Apparently a minor work, but in reality a stunning one: a heap of Audiard’s finest qualities.
With that particular, unique combination of realistic and poetic elements for which this director seems to have the magic formula.
And maybe I am just a naïve person, but to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, in Audiard’s movies, gives me hope, strength and trust.
In cinema, at least, if not in life.