Director Jacques Audiard’s story of three unrelated refugees posing as a family in order to enter France won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Dheepan (Antonythasan Jesuthasan) was a soldier in the rebel Tamil Tigers during Sri Lanka’s civil war. With Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and 9-year-old orphan Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby), he moves to a grim housing project outside Paris. For a time the film settles into a character study, as their family act gradually becomes reality. The intimate scenes are lovely, such as when the little girl tries to explain to Yalini how a mother should act.

Their building is eventually consumed by a drug war, and a late explosion of violence works better as metaphor than it does as logical drama. The remarkable performances from the central trio are what carries the film.