Big on struggle, bullish on sex
Dheepan (out of 4) Starring Antonythasan Jesuthasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan and Claudine Vinasithamby. Directed by Jacques Audiard. Opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 115 minutes. STC
The unexpected but not undeserved winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2015, Jacques Audiard’s immigrant drama sears with righteous fury.
French master Audiard’s bent for outsider narratives — A Prophet and Rust and Bone are among his testaments — finds full expression with a timely story of urban tensions.
Antonythasan Jesuthasan’s protagonist was once a Tamil Tiger soldier, killing in the name of liberation during Sri Lanka’s Civil War. Now he is as weary as the scarred old elephant seen in symbolic flashbacks, seeking only to live in peace — but to do so he must flee his homeland.
He adopts the name Dheepan, taken from a dead man’s passport, and teams with two random females — 26-year-old Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and 9-year-old orphan Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby), also using assumed names — to feign the family status needed to migrate to Europe.
The ruse works, but this family of necessity ends up in a suburban Paris slum called Le Pré, which means “meadow” but is rife with wild human animals of the gangster kind.
Dheepan secures employment as handyman for the compound, while he, Yalini and Illayaal struggle to adapt. But the terror Dheepan escaped won’t leave him alone; he’ll have to confront his past if he has any hope of saving the future.
Audiard’s multi-scribe narrative takes a questionable turn, but it’s rooted in reality. The three main players are all new to acting or nearly so, yet they exude authenticity — Jesuthasan actually was a Tamil Tiger in his youth. The gangsters are also credible. One of them, played by Vincent Rottiers, elicits sympathy. Complicated lives get tough yet compassionate treatment in Dheepan. Peter Howell Visually ravishing and sexually provocative, Neon Bull offers an unforgettable portrait of a changing Brazil, at once earthy and arty.
A family of oddballs cares for rodeo bulls in this film by Gabriel Mascaro ( August Winds), which lyrically subverts its macho domain.
Iremar (Juliano Cazarré) is a vaquero, tasked with handling bulls before they bounce their riders. What Iremar really longs to do is push cloth through a sewing machine, to further his fashion dreams.
He makes lustful duds for dancer/ truck driver Galega (Maeve Jinkings), who has a young daughter named Caca (Alyne Santana). We’re kept guessing about these and other relationships, but Mascaro leaves no doubt about his central thesis: people are more like animals than they’d choose to think, especially in matters of sex. Peter Howell Pretty as a John Constable painting and almost as static, the latest highbrow melodrama from Terence Davies ( The House of Mirth) invites close scrutiny while resisting complete empathy.
This screen adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic Scottish novel, set in rural Scotland at the start of the First World War, inflicts hardship and tragedy upon its protagonists with the grim fatefulness of a Thomas Hardy story.
It’s the kind of movie where an entire gospel song is sung as the camera moves slowly through a church. Someone speaks of better times ahead, just as war erupts.
A commanding lead performance by Agyness Deyn as Chris, a farm woman tested by extraordinary circumstances, overrides most concerns. “The land endures,” the narrator says, and so does Chris, vividly. Peter Howell Canuck backwater Beaver’s Ridge has a welcoming committee, but there’s no casserole and cake for unloved home girl Cassie Cranston (Jewel Staite). Unfairly damned as the “town slut” in her regretful youth, and with good reason to have bad memories, she’s feared and loathed as a Toronto sex columnist who mocks her hick heritage.
A family funeral forces Cassie to confront past antagonists and current fears, as town folk unwisely enlist her to liberate them from prudery.
The setup screams slapstick, and there are raunchy laughs to be had in Jeremy Lalonde’s Slamdance premiere, but the film heads in a more serious direction. It’s about social anxiety, with Lalonde and his strong ensemble cast smartly illustrating the tyranny of expectations, in and out of the bedroom. The film doesn’t swing, it rocks. Peter Howell Shane (Andrew Martin), a closeted gay Anishinabe teen living in Northern Ontario, inhabits a world of secrets. Anxious to begin a new life in Toronto at university, he’s pulled in other directions. He is a support for his mom (Jennifer Podemski), who remains emotionally shattered since his sister’s suicide and goes to desperate places to find money to support his family. It’s not easy to keep up a straight pretence with girlfriend Tara (Mary Galloway) while dealing with deepening feelings for David (Harley Legarde-Beacham), who is conflicted about their relationship. They could make a fresh start in the city, but the emotional cost seems enormous. Cree/Métis writer-director Adam Garnet Jones has crafted a personal story with a strong aboriginal cast. Lovely cinematography from James Kinistin. Linda Barnard