Dheepan review: Audiard’s latest feels more like a doodle than a tableau vivant

Dheepan (Jesuthasan) is a Tamil Tiger who flees the Sri Lankan civil war, taking with him two strangers – posing as his wife ( Srinivasan) and daughter (Vinasithamby) – in the hope they will make it easier for him to claim asylum in Europe.

The makeshift family unit find work and accommodation in a violent Parisian banlieue, where their attempts toward domesticity are disrupted by language difficulties, post-traumatic stress and gun-slinging hooligans.

Jacques Audiard's new film was – we are told – inspired by Persian Letters, a 1721 proto-novel by Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, recounting the experiences of two Persian noblemen journeying through France. In this spirit, the viewer is never too sure about the politics underlying the gang warfare on display.

Unhappily, we're not too sure about many things: it's unclear what transpires when Dheepan visits his former commanding officer; it's uncertain why a local kingpin (Vincent Rottiers) takes a shine to Dheepan's wife, Yalini, and it's equally baffling when, in the final act, the film suddenly turns into Rambo II.

The same director is often seen to juggle many themes and narrative arcs: it's hard to think of another filmmaker that could have brought together Rust and Bone's amputee whale trainer and a brawling deadbeat into a plausible romance. Dheepan's elements remain just that: they hang there for perusal, a periodic table with recognisable blocks and trends, but no real application.

Terrific central performances and fine camerawork from Éponine Momenceau add much-needed grit to the coming shoot-'em-up (and an utterly bizarre coda), yet Dheepan lacks the gravitas and coherence of Audiard's best-loved works. For all the melodramatic eventfulness of A Prophet and Rust and Bone, those films were tonally consistent. Dheepan may revisit the director's pet preoccupations with masculinity and violence, but it fails to land any significant punches.

To be fair, it was always going to be hard to keep pace with Audiard's recent run of movies. Comparatively, Dheepan feels like a doodle: engaging enough for the duration but muddled and ill-conceived. No wonder heads were scratched when this film took home the Palme d'Or from Cannes last year. Consensus choice, ahoy.