From any angle, Dupin the Wandering undoubtedly has an alluring shell. It’s a standard “film festival” film: first, it has an ostensibly socially caring theme: it follows three unknown Sri Lankan refugees who disguise themselves as a family in search of political asylum and struggle through Paris into the new life. On the other hand, the film also continues the genre elements of the Audia films as always: from the 2009 "The Prophet", which is dotted with gangster elements, and won the Cannes Jury Prize, to the 2012 "Rust and Bone", which returned to the French melodrama tradition. Audia has always been proficient in operating the most first-class film industry resources in France, and tried to cut into his own unique perspective in the stereotyped genre tradition, and reflected his humanistic concern by instilling a continuous stream of sociality into the film. It is this "humanistic exploration of genre films" that makes Audia's works in stark contrast with a large number of French author films that reflect and criticize social reality based on naturalistic aesthetics. Compared with the latter, which is wrapped in simple audio-visual effects such as natural light, hand-held follow-up, and no soundtrack, and uses it as an aesthetic weapon to permeate a strong moral atmosphere; Audia's works, which are also focused on social topics, have a strong sense of morality. He has a good-looking and poetic coat. His films are close to reality but are not limited to a non-rendering photography. He also accepts all audio-visual languages in traditional commercial films with moderation. For example, in "The Wandering Dipin", Dupin, who first arrived in Paris, was selling small toys in a street cafe with a fluorescent cat ear headband in the dark. Audia used a slow-motion and electronic soundtrack rendering scene to let the fluorescent headband. First of all, it flashes on the black screen of the big screen, and then Dipan's figure gradually appears. The visual design is extremely innovative and impressive. And Audia's solid screenwriting team has ensured that his films have strong plots or reversals, rather than simply giving way to a "faithful" record of reality.
Compared with this superficially well-made production, the problems of "The Wandering Dipin" are obscure and deeper. Perhaps the unshakable experience of viewing the film most clearly exposes the film's inherent flaws, namely that it touches on a global social issue on the surface and portrays unfortunate Third World refugees; The last film again showed a kind of indifference to reality. It is not so much that the director and screenwriter wrote in the face of society and weave the results of social observation into a story with humane care. It would be better to say that this is first of all a story creation that turns away from reality, and in turn looks for relevant social elements from reality and fills it back into the script itself. Through such a social processing procedure, the film has a false political stance, but it cannot hide the impoverishment it will inevitably encounter when it condescendingly imagines another class. And this poverty manifested in the film is a cliché retelling of the lack of practical experience of another life.
The hero of the film, Dipan, is from Sri Lanka's Tamil rebels, the Liberation Tigers. This organization was established in the early 1970s and is committed to establishing an independent Tamil country in the north and east of Sri Lanka. In the 1980s and 1990s, it assassinated India, Sri Lanka and many other countries by means of travel, assassination, suicide bombing and other multiple violent methods. A dignitary and a hostile figure, Sri Lanka was plunged into civil war and successfully captured part of the territory. However, the counterattack of the Sri Lankan government forces at the beginning of this century caused the LTTE to gradually disintegrate. By 2009, the government forces had recovered all the territory, and the LTTE high-level officials were almost swept away. The film was born under such a background. As the last soldier of the Tiger Rebels who resisted to the end, Dupin not only lost his wife and children in the war, but also lost the only land he could live in, and was forced to flee. trip. Different from the current Syrian refugee incident in Europe, Dipan's military identity not only foreshadows the subsequent violence in the film, but also because the LTTE has long been characterized as a terrorist organization by Western countries, Dipan's political identity is also more than ordinary. Refugees who have been displaced by war and lost their homes are more complicated.
However, the director doesn't seem to care much about this complicated past, and he doesn't pay much attention to it. In the middle of the film, the elephant played back in slow motion in Dupin's dream, as a metaphor, seems to have represented all the imagination of a middle-class European writer and director of the world wars and painful memories in South Asia. And a few shooting scenes with South Asian atmosphere against the background of coconut trees at the beginning of the film are just to explain how these three "refugees" who never knew each other were put together as a family: the heroine Yalini originally tried to escape to find other The family members of the United Kingdom were forced to pick up the orphan Elia from the roadside in order to escape from Sri Lanka, and traveled to France with Dupin and the three disguised as the dead family members on their passports. And France, the Western power that is most generous to its former colonies and most beset by immigration issues, is where the main story of the film takes place.
Compared to another French Palme d'Or winner, Cauchy, who has an immigrant background and whose early works are all aimed at North African immigrants living in France ("The Life of Adele", 2013). Odia's description of the immigrant life of this "family" is painless and very cramped. If Cauchy can go deep into immigrant families, through the roles and attitudes of individuals of different ages and backgrounds in French society, he can analyze the contradictions between the traditional customs and psychological structure of immigrant groups and modern French society, and analyze the contradictions between economic, criminal, There are various phenomena that are taking place in French society through multiple dimensions such as emotion. "The Wandering Dupin" constructs a closed narrative environment that is completely isolated from French society. Except for the usual passages of selling small goods and going to the immigration office to seek political asylum when you first moved to Paris. The focus of the film is entirely on the Dupin family's move to the outskirts of Paris - two residential complexes linked to the drug trade and gang activity - the gang situation, a theme that Audia is very familiar with and a return to the director's signature elements of violence. The question, however, is, are Parisian suburbs really what Audia portrays them to be? Another world full of drugs, crime and gang fights? Apparently, Odia's depiction of reality is rigid and rudimentary. For example, Cahier de la Cinéma sneered that such a portrayal of the suburbs of Paris was just a mindless retelling of the TV and newspaper imaginations of the Paris suburbs. However, none of the middle-class media people who make these news stories really know and go deep into these places. Films like "The Wandering Dupin" that ostensibly have left-wing affirmative concerns are actually helping the common people to stereotype immigrants, and even helping the far-right Le Pen camp to cast votes. According to Cahiers de Cinema, films are "either private artistic expressions or products of the cultural industry, which should be generously acknowledged rather than manipulated to convince people that those standard products are works of art". And "The Wandering Dipin" is a typical example of dishonesty. Although it is a product that can be quantified in the cultural industry, it always finds ways to package itself as a work of art, and even go to the so-called art stage like Cannes to defraud the supreme honor.
In the suburbs, Dupin found a job as a street janitor, cleaner and mail receiver; also for his "wife" Yarini, who did not speak French, found a job as a nanny cooking and cleaning for the disabled uncle of the gang leader. ; and their "daughter" will have to go to a new school, learn a new language, and make new friends. This plot starts from the perspectives of three people in parallel, showing the dilemma of this family that is not bound by blood when integrating into the new society, as well as the alienation, misunderstanding and conflict between members caused by this predicament. Compared with Dupin, who has nowhere to go, he can only choose to forget the past, stay away from the battlefield, and start a new life in France. The young Yalini was unwilling. She could have gone to England to reunite with other relatives and start a new life, but she had to learn a new language in France, take care of a daughter for nothing, and pressed another one on her head. middle-aged husband. Compared to Dupin's steadfast refusal to regroup the LTTE overseas, Aline's attempt to flee to the UK despite the outcome of her political asylum application carries a huge moral burden. After all, her departure will affect the fate of the other two "relatives". Compared with the more delicate but somewhat clichéd description of this kind of tension-filled family relationship, the trivia of life between Yalini and the gang leader due to the huge difference in language and identity is very eye-catching and moving. Obviously, she received unprecedented respect from this dangerous man, and as a result, she developed a kind of wishful thinking. In the whole film, this simple, sincere and insignificant emotion is to lose everyone's social identity. Afterwards, the most free and the most instinctive. But it is also this inexplicable emotion that drags everyone back to the state of "war" violence at the end of the film.
In fact, the issue of violence is not only the point where the film's beginnings and ends mirror each other, but it may well be the starting point for this ingenious script. Whether it is the years of war caused by the turbulent political situation in Sri Lanka, or the gang fights between drug dealers in the French streets, just like the lines in the film, there may be differences in size, but the essence is the same. The film's ostensible stunt also stemmed from the fact that two seemingly unrelated violent incidents were implicated through the life experiences of the three refugees. Allows the audience to see how violence works in every corner of the world from the film's paradoxical narrative development. And Dupin, who only understood how difficult it is to live in peace because of the war, despite all his efforts to draw a "ceasefire line" between the two houses and strive for a peaceful living space, he still fell into the gang for his "wife" in the end. He returned to the battlefield after a violent dispute between them, beginning a bloody killing. It is true that this witty, resolute, and single-handedly swept the last battle of the enemy's nest is quite good-looking, and it also has the momentum of violent reversal at the end of "Straw Dog", but it lacks Dustin Huo in "Straw Dog". Violent motives that accumulate after Fulman is repeatedly offended. After all, Dupin is an outsider and bystander to the gang fight, and it's too much of a stretch for "wife" to go on a killing spree due to a dangerous encounter. If you take away the unrealistic Hollywood-style happy ending at the end of the film (the hero and heroine are fake, make a good relationship, have a new child and start a new life), think about what Dupin's massacre may have incurred. Given the actual fate (jail or the exposure of military identity and being deported to Sri Lanka to die), the film creator's intention to force the drama and use social themes to decorate the facade is obvious. Because looking back, is it a Sri Lankan refugee? What kind of immigrant suffering did you encounter? These seem to be irrelevant. Because the story has been written for a long time, now you only need to put on a good-looking coat that reflects the creator's social responsibility and you are done. As for the reality? Audia and his team didn't care. And he is said to have started looking for the next third world country for inspiration for his next film festival genre.
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