Life During Wartime

DHEEPAN (A-minus) - Intense director Jacques Audiard gets back on his A game with this intense story of refugees from Sri Lanka struggling to survive in a besieged housing complex in the suburbs of Paris.

Audiard is responsible for one of the most powerful films of the past decade, "A Prophet," about a young Arab who ends up in a French prison only to establish his mafia bonafides. Previous to that, he told another crime story in "The Beat That My Heart Skipped," about a young man hoping to avoid his father's soiled footsteps by becoming a pianist. Audiard slipped a bit with 2012's dour "Rust and Bone."

Working with frequent collaborator Thomas Bidegain, Audiard finds his voice with this suspenseful character study of a former rebel fighter trying to reconcile his role in a new country. That fighter takes on the identity of a dead man, Dheepan, as a means to escape a refugee camp. He bands together with a strange woman and a randomly selected orphan girl so they can pose as Dheepan's family and improve their chances of being selected for a berth on a boat to freedom.

Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan), Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and little Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby) embark on a journey that ends in a rundown banlieue outside of Paris, where Dheepan takes up as the property's caretaker while his "wife" keeps house for a shell-shocked former gang member and his "daughter" goes to school and learns French. Gangs, apparently made up mostly of Muslim men, run roughshod over the place; Dheepan is given special instructions on what times he may enter their main hangout to clean up the messes from their debauched nights. Dheepan is imbued with that magical immigrant ingenuity that makes him a reliable handyman (he is intent on wrestling the giant gears of the elevators into operating again).

This makeshift husband-wife-daughter trio awkwardly functions about as good as any other nuclear family. Yalini never hesitates to remind Dheepan, though, that Illayaal is not her daughter, and she frequently threatens to escape to a cousin's home in London. Yalini tiptoes around the gang members at the apartment she tends to, and she eventually befriends one of the thugs, Brahim (Vincent Rottiers), who sports an ankle monitor since his recent release from prison. Their interactions are some of the most profound moments of the film, as a grudging respect develops between them, with a hint of possible romance. At times they communicate without words -- the nod of a head, for instance, or merely a smile -- or just let the other speak in their native language, content with not understanding what's being said.

Meantime, Dheepan eventually starts lusting after Yalini, sneaking glances at her when she steps out of the shower, hoping to consummate this fictitious marriage. That's just one sign of his overall frustration with living among a bunch of wannabe gangsters who have no idea that he was the real deal in his homeland. Midway through the film, Dheepan's past catches up with him, as an old rebel pal surfaces. This unsettles him at first, but it eventually proves liberating. Soon he is slicking his hair back and walking with a renewed swagger.

This all leads to a rather shocking climax that might not square with what has come before, unless you consider that Audiard was setting the table for this endgame all along. He is well served by his two lead actors -- essentially amateurs -- who exude authenticity as desperate strangers in an uncertain environment. That new world is racked by danger and brutality. Audiard captures that mood with a granular realism and a camera that always seems to be peering over someone's shoulder.

The director immerses us so deeply in Dheepan's world that we can empathize with his dilemma: he essentially went from one war zone to another, and his training provides him only one tool with which to survive. Cross him at your own peril.