Dheepan gets rave reviews in New York

A movie about a former LTTE fighter, coping with life as a refugee in the backstreets of Paris, opened in New York theatres last week to rave reviews. Titled “Dheepan”, the film won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year but took almost a year to hit the screens in the US.

According to the New York Times, the lead role is played by a former Tamil Tiger who went by the code name Antonythasan Jesuthasan, described as a guy with the “charisma of a Hollywood gunslinger”.

The irony of the story is that the Sri Lankan arrives in France in search of peace and quiet but finds himself living in squalid quarters in a neighbourhood resembling a war zone populated by asylum-seeking immigrants. The wife, also a Tamil from the Northern Province, wears a hijab even though she is not a Muslim but the head scarf helps her to blend in with the migrant Muslim population in the Paris housing project.

The movie has been described as “an immensely powerful thriller” and “a radical and astonishing film that turns conventional thinking about immigrants on its head.” Directed by reputed French film maker Jacques Audiard, the movie is in French with English sub titles.