Jacques Audiard’s Palme d’Or winning film is a great look into the difficulties that immigrants in Europe go through their adaptation process in after arriving in Europe, moreover, coming as war refugees, with a nice little twist of action on top of its preeminent social criticism.

Starting with a strong opening built between the refugees’ camp where Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan), Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and Illayal (Claudine Vinasithamby) fake being a real family to escape from the civil war occurring in Sri Lanka and go to France, where they will be trying to survive as they can in the expensive Paris.

Their situation will start to change once they get official shelter by the French authorities and get State help to improve their conditions. They will be sent to live at the outskirts of the city in an isolated and conflictive area, filled with gangs and drug flats, where they will try to settle in and find their place among their neighbours as Dheepan starts working as building manager, Yalini as caretaker of an older, senile man, and Illayal starts going to school.

The movie tries to look carefully onto the struggles that each one of the characters have towards getting along with one another, in this family that they have artificially formed, and towards the new culture, language and reality that surrounds them. That is quite well depicted in the cases of Dheepan and Yalini, especially with the former, as we look very different types of approaches on how to face their situation between the two of them. But sadly enough, that element is slightly overlooked when it comes to the little Illayal, her story being quite superficial and her part a bit underused through the duration of the film.

This set-up gets quite a turnaround in the second half of the film, and while the transition is made quite smoothly and coherent, it feels a bit that the picture was particularly strong during the initial more socially charged developments instead of this one. We will find ourselves how this area in which they find themselves in will evolve into a sort of a war zone, making all their initial worries and concerns even more obvious as it will remember them of the situation they had escape from.

Dheepan, who had lost his original family back in the war, will find himself in the uncomfortable position of showing his true colours in order to not let his new family have the same fate as the former one.

Everything will build up into a fantastic action-packed final shoot-out sequence during which, either if the violence becomes evidently visible or not, as an audience you will feel completely swallowed by its intensity as well as feeling completely save in the hands of a filmmaker who very steadily and convincingly knows the how and why is he filming each frame the way he is filming it. When it comes to its feel and mood, this scene in fact will be slightly reminiscing to that from the ending of Taxi Driver (1976, dir. Martin Scorsese), although its styles and imagery might be quite different.

All this story is cemented throughout the film by very strong performances, not only by the three main characters but also for the rest of secondary roles which (even if some of them appearing very briefly) give that small isle of concrete apartment buildings and dry grass the enough life through which we actually come to feel as we are also part of this new community and we come to know the various people that surround us.

Concluding, the film excels in showing us the hardships that immigrants go through from their point of view while immersing to their psyche and doubts for their new life. Still, although its premise of using a man, a woman and a child is great as it would allow to show three different realities, we feel like the children’s perspective gets in the end a bit overlooked, something we have to regret. At the same time, its transition towards a more thrilleresque type of movie seems, even if well connected, quite unnecessary as the social part of the story seems like the true heart and soul of the story. Either way, besides this couple of elements, the film is still perfectly crafted and well put, providing a moving story, through relatable characters supported by strong acting, that will leave you wanting more.