AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

satxfan This was a wonderful film that depicts a experiences of a refugee 'family' as they try to establish a life in France. Oddly enough, the ending of this film has been highly criticized. IMO, the people who have criticized the ending perhaps have not carefully thought through the events leading up to that 'ending.' Dheepan's wife is held hostage and Dheepan goes to the rescue. He attacks a couple of gang members with a machete and then, using a confiscated gun, kills several more gang members on his way up to the top floor of the apartment building where his wife is being held. The building is still surrounded and controlled by violent gang members. Without much doubt, the police are on their way there, too. It seems that the only real 'ending' for Dheepan is either to be killed by gang members - after all, he's on the top floor with no logical escape route - OR - to be arrested by the police for murder. It's not even imaginable that he escaped that situation unscathed. It's even more unimaginable that he could have gotten out of there and then emigrated to England.The 'ending' then is not the real ending to Dheepan's story. His story obviously did not end well. The 'ending' tagged into the film is a dream - a dream of what might have been. The 'ending' is shot in warm, hazy tones, no one has aged or changed - It's a wish, a dream, a last fleeting thought.

Reno Rangan The renowned French filmmaker, Jacques Audiard back with this new sensational film. This time he has chosen to tell us the story of a Sri Lankan Tamil Eelam freedom fighter who had fled to France after the war, followed by his struggles in the new place. The entire film was in Tamil language, but there some French dialogues too. I have been waiting for this, even after I got many opportunities, I had postponed them for some reasons. Finally, I'm very happy for not just got over it, but for the film that has powerful contents to give a peek into the immigrant's lifestyle, I mean not in a pleasant way.Right now it is a huge issue around the world to curb the immigration, especially the illegal ones. But some reasons are really heartbreaking, like in the film 'The Good Lie'. Usually the people like in this story are not welcomed, so they have to lay low and swallow all the troubles they bump into. Sometime the events reflect what happened back in the homeland. In a such way this tale takes place where a civil war fighter, Dheepan, from Lanka lands in France with his fake family of a wife and a daughter named Yalini and Ilayaal respectively.In order to forget the past, he tries his best to start over a new life. Since he did not come wealth, he had to adapt whatever life offered to survive and to protect his family. Knowing living on the edge of the fire, they were left alone, but how long, because the fire flame always catches the vulnerable objects around it. So what comes later is the finale with a twist and to follow the end credits.I have seen many films about what this film was focused on, but this was somewhat different, mainly because of people from the culture of less known geographical area. I can understand Tamil, but I found hard to get this Sri Lankan Tamil lines. There were films about Sri Lankan refugees, those films like 'Nandha', 'Kannathil Muthamittal' are different kinds. Maybe this is the first western film to dig on Lankan Eelam topic, especially after the end of civil war and far away from the home. Though it does not take a side, except opening scene, the rest of the film is set in France."Sometimes, they say things and laugh. I understand all the word, but they don't sound funny"They have got a simple storyline, but developed to its best. The progression becomes stronger, particularly when it reaches the final stage. I think the filmmakers did a good research, especially the cultural differences to highlight. That's the most of the film concentrated to only on the one perspective, but the threats what people like them face was also brought into the narration. Like caught between the two worlds and culture, and to defend themselves, to do what has to be done.Very realistic approach, but the question is do the things like this happen in real, especially in France? If you like Jacques Audiard films, then you should not miss it at all. These main actors are kind of new in front of the camera and they were amazing. Technically as well the film sounds good, but as I had heard, the filmmakers were hurried to finish it off when the Cannes Film Festival was around the corner. I think they have managed everything properly, and you would too appreciate the effort once you watch it.It went to numerous film festivals and won some awards that includes Palme d'Or at Cannes. Kind of must see by the director's fans, even if you are not a fan, it is still worth a watch. Because you won't get another this or seen before. Even if you did, the cast wasn't the familiar one. That's the big difference here. The film has a message like, what one must be doing in his second chance of life. There are violences, feels strong, though the effects are raw, not the events or the scenes. Definitely not a masterpiece, but still I would recommend it for the adults.8/10

Howard Schumann The 26-year civil war in Sri Lanka (1983-2009), a conflict between the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority and the Hindu Tamil minority in which 200,000 people were killed, including tens of thousands of Tamil civilians forms the backdrop for French director Jacques Audiard's searing refugee drama Dheepan. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, it is the story of three Tamil immigrants from Sri Lanka newly settled in Paris, their adjustment to an often unwelcoming environment, and the bond they form based on mutual need and acceptance of the others pain.Like Audiard's previous film, Rust and Bone, it is raw and visceral, yet also a film of lyricism and sensitivity. Though the film seems to draw a parallel between the war in Sri Lanka and social unrest in France, it is a fictional film and, according to Audiard, is not intended to mirror the actual conditions of refugees in France which he believes has been mostly welcoming. Written by Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré and photographed by Eponine Momenceau, the film opens in Sri Lanka as the Tamil fighter Dheepan (Antonythasan Jesuthasan, a novelist and a former Tamil Tiger himself), whose cause faces defeat, lays palm leaves across the corpses on a funeral pyre before burning his own military fatigues.The scene shifts to Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan), a young woman attempting to ensure her passage out of the country by finding a young girl to pose as her daughter, She finds Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby), a girl who can pass for nine, and takes her to where Dheepan (an assumed name) is being given the passports of three dead people. Assuming new identities, the three pretend to be a family escaping persecution in Sri Lanka and are relocated to France where they are employed as caretakers of a housing project in the Paris suburbs. It is a locale reminiscent of the projects in Mathieu Kassovitz', La Haine, where drug dealing and urban decay are pervasive.Their guide Youssouf (Marc Zinga) gives them a tour but the instructions, in a language they do not understand, do not register. Youssouf skirts around the problem of the drug dealers who congregate in another block across the courtyard, only telling him to wait until they leave before beginning to clean. As Illayal goes to school to learn French and Yalini is assigned to cook and clean for an elderly man whose nephew Brahim (Vincent Rottiers) is one of the local gang leaders, the film traces the gradual assimilation of the family, their overriding desire for connection, not only to the language and customs, but to each other. Though the film is restrained with moments of tenderness and humor as well as anger and frustration, underneath there is a growing tension.Violence erupts when Dheepan, who suffers from PTSD, draws a white line across the courtyard that they are not to cross and it has a jarring effect though, to me, not out of sync with the film's setup and exploration of its characters. Though Audiard claims that Dheepan is not intended to be political, given the real-life nature of the circumstances, it cannot help but be just that. He said that he wanted "to give the faceless a name, a face, a shape," a story of their own and he has succeeded. In making a human document, he reminds us of the connection we have with people around the world whose voices we cannot hear, whose faces we cannot see, and whose hands we may never touch.

paultreloar75 This movie wasn't what I expected at all, to be honest. Whereas I was expecting gritty and tense, the plot is actually very much about the three people who we learn to care so much about. A family uprooted to a foreign land where the only one who can help make sense of it is the child whose dealing with oh so much more.As a totem for some of the current travails facing the European Union project (tm) it's quite a pertinent and valuable piece that shows how much you need some luck and determination and application to make any progress in life. It makes you care for these simple people, who have similar hopes and dreams and worries and discontents as the rest of us.A clever use of juxtapositions underpins much of what we see, and whilst some have questioned the explosive climax, I think it ends things very well, although the sugar-coated conclusion did see me mark it down one point. What a movie though, what a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining approach to the modern world. Worth a watch.