Stephanie Chuang

CMS 497

Richard Watts

5 March 2021

Performative Suffering in Dheepan and Murder in Pacot

Within Cinema Monde and Francophone films from around the world, there is the

inevitable power dynamic of colonizer and colonized. In particular, there is the morally grey act

of performative suffering, an idea both perpetuated by French and Western peoples and taken

advantage of by their colonized counterparts. This includes both the tendency of Western

journalism to paint the colonized as in a constant state of suffering and helplessness and the

colonized to exaggerate their state of suffering in exchange for basic aid. One such example is

that of Haiti, particularly in regards to the 2011 earthquake. “These ‘standard’ tropes of Haitian

poverty, criminality, and misery did not come into being after the earthquake: they existed

already, and those pre existing patterns of representation and expectation set in motion how the

media explained and depicted the earthquake” (Wagner 9). The tropes that Wagner is referring to

here are the ideals of poverty and hopelessness that Western media has forced onto Haiti that

have only been exacerbated following the earthquake. The problem with these tropes is that they

paint an incomplete picture of Haiti. “At the same time, amid those chronic conditions, forms of

everyday life life persisted, and continued to endure…” (Wagner 2). With or without the

earthquake, there still exists a semblance of normality and routine that does not fit into the

picture of suffering that Western viewers have painted for the Haitians. On the reverse side of the

spectrum, there was also the tendency of Haitians to exaggerate their suffering in hopes of

inspiring humanitarian aid. “Representative truth did not matter, even Haitian people who might
on another day criticize the foreign media for degrading them also knew how useful those

representations could be in securing aid” (Wagner 15). In regards to compelling images of

suffering that are sent to foreign media, the tropes forced onto Hatians propels a cycle in which

suffering is decontextualized, desensitized, and commodified in exchange for basic sympathy. As

a result, Haitians themselves must play by the rules of motivated truths. These two phenomena

are present in Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan, and Raoul Peck’s Murder in Pacot. However, while

Dheepan seems to embrace the performative suffering described above as a fact of life for

refugees and people in crisis, Murder in Pacot takes a more nuanced and critical view of it.

Dheepan follows the plight of three Tamil refugees, the titular Dheepan, Yalini, and

Illayaal, as they essentially lie their way to asylum in France. The film opens with the first and

arguably, the largest, lie. Yalini is searching for a refugee orphan to pretend to be her and

Dheepan’s daughter, so that they may take on the identities of the presumably dead owners of the

passports they have. Herein lies the first act of performative suffering; Yalini and Dheepan are

more likely to secure the sympathy needed for asylum with a child as a family than without.

They could very well choose to split up and take each passport for themselves, but they do not.

Furthermore, when speaking to the immigrations officer, the translator tells them to lie about

their circumstances because he knows it will give them a better chance of gaining entry to

France. With somewhat shocked expressions on their faces, Dheepan, Yalini, and Illayaal play

along. The motif repeats throughout the film in different forms, but the idea remains the same:

Dheepan, Yalini, and Illayaal willingly morph into an exaggerated image of suffering in order to

get what they need. One of the forms of performative suffering exemplified by Dheepan and

Yalini include code switching, or lack thereof, to appear more or less privileged. “But his real or

perceived ignorance of French creates a protective barrier that renders him almost invisible to the
mobsters, and prevents him from being drawn into their underworld. Of course, Dheepan tries

and succeeds to learn French, but he does not advertise this fact” (King 98). In this turn of

events, we see a critical element that affects the way this film treats performative suffering: a

choice. This choice in particular has a vital connection to the final sequence of the film. As an

audience, we are meant to be rooting for Dheepan and Yalini to succeed. When Dheepan is

depicted as being able to use performative suffering, or in this case, performative

monolingualism, to his advantage, his performative suffering becomes not a necessary crutch,

but a voluntary skill in his toolbox, thus absolving the trope of any criticism. Of course, not

every instance of performative suffering in Dheepan is like this, but it would seem that the most

critical instances, like when Dheepan fakes not understanding the French warnings of the gangs

to save Yalini, are. The ending of the film suggests a fantasy happy ending in which Dheepan,

Yalini, and Illayaal move to Britain and start a new life there. An optimistic view on the film

would suggest that this epilogue is true; after all that Dheepan, Yalini, and Illayaal have gone

through, they have successfully made it out. However, a pessimistic take on the film’s ending

would suggest that the end sequence is merely an unattainable fantasy. Do Dheepan, Yalini, and

Illayal find happiness in Britain? Or is it a cruel mockery of a state of happiness they will never

achieve? “Yet my own tacit answer is, of course: yes. That is not to say I believe this film in the

sense of its being a narrative of a superficially authentic immigrant experience in France; rather, I

believe in the emotions it elicits, those which mark an alienated life after the loss of one’s home”

(Hastie 104). Regardless of the truth of the last scene, as the author notes here, the sentiment is

still the same. The burning hope of a successful end result for a fake refugee family still exists,

and because of that, there is an implied causal relationship between performative suffering and

this utopian result. When the audience sees Dheepan successfully (in practice or in fantasy)
gaining his new life, the story is wrapped up cleanly and the audience rests in satisfaction

knowing that Dheepan cleverly manipulated his way into a stable post refugee life. The

indignation at what Dheepan goes through to get there is forgotten, or at the very least,

diminished to a degree. In the end, the motif of performative suffering is treated more as a matter

of fact necessary sacrifice to be used to one’s advantage, instead of a problematic behaviour

forced upon non-Western cultures.

By contrast, Murder in Pacot takes a much more nuanced and critical look at

performative suffering. Murder in Pacot follows the lives of an unnamed, formerly wealthy

Haitian couple following the 2011 Haiti Earthquake. In order to afford repairs on their crumbling

house, they must rent out the only livable room in their house to an aid worker and his Haitian

girlfriend. Right after the earthquake, there is already the aforementioned forcing upon of

suffering onto Haitians, in this case by the ever present and faceless NGO. Under the pretense of

“helping,” Alex, the worker who is renting the couple’s room, seems to fill his time with acts of

service that are never shown, a clear implication of the emptiness of his words. We see him

occasionally do things like give cereal to the wife and husband, a meaningless act that indicates

his clear lack of understanding of the true suffering around him, the suffering that is causing the

couple to sleep in a concrete hut while he takes their room. “Peck pokes fun at this reality by

naming the agency that Alex works for ‘Beyond Aid Unlimited’ while giving no clue as to what

he actually does in the country or what qualifies him to be there” (Pressley-Sanon 461). Alex’s

unspecified purpose in Haiti and his rude intrusion into the couple’s lives indicates that the

couple do not fit his ideal of suffering for Haiti. Even the very reason that the couple have to rent

their house out comes from a representative of the United Nations, another one of the NGOs

supposedly sent to help Haitians. While it would seem that the couple actually needs help
repairing their house, they are offered no assistance in that regard. Peck’s message here is clear;

in their efforts to fix what they, the West, see as wrong, these NGOs have upended the couple’s

lives and further complicated their recovery from the earthquake. Furthermore, these actions are

not even meant with good intentions, but with self satisfactory righteousness. Alex even has

pictures of himself and non-white children that he treats as his trophies. This strongly suggests

that in his deliberate misunderstanding of Haitian suffering, Alex does not intend to actually

help, but to maintain the dynamic of power between the colloquial “West” and non-West. Alex

must always be the one saving the Haitians, he must be the one that the Haitians are indebted to.

He, nor the faceless NGOs, cannot imagine a scenario where the Haitians might be able to

manage themselves in spite of a crisis. Thus, he and the NGOs perpetuate the cycle of

performative suffering that changes the way the people who might need help act in order to

receive it. This is what makes his relationship with the couple so significant; once wealthy, the

couple is now forced into this particular image of suffering decided by Alex and his NGOs, and

because of this the audience can immediately understand that there is something sinister about

the aid they are being given and the reasons behind it. Aside from Alex and the NGOs, there is

also the character of Andremise, Alex’s Haitian girlfriend. Her self awareness of her position in

relation to Alex is the biggest indicator of Murder in Pacot’s criticism of the performative

suffering trope. Andremise is originally a lower class Haitian who is incredibly aware of the

social hierarchy that surrounds her, Alex, and the couple. As the couple is reduced to performing

the duties previously relegated to their servants, it is Andremise who proves to be most

knowledgeable about how to perform household tasks, which in addition to her own admission,

exposes her background. Throughout the film, she transitions from different class spaces as being

below the couple through her origin to being literally above the couple as she shares Alex’s
rented room with him. Andremise is clearly aware of the proverbial social ladder that she wants

to climb; she even goes so far to change her name to Jennifer. However, she also knows the

futility of climbing it; despite all her efforts, she can’t escape the image that the West has forced

upon her. “Unfortunately for her, representative of many of those who staked their claim in the

millions of dollars that were promised to rebuild the country, and the foreign presence that

promised countless opportunities for those who survived the quake, the promises were empty”

(Pressley-Sanon 242). At one point in Murder in Pacot, Andremise shouts that she knows she is

“just the white man’s whore.” Despite Alex promising he loves her, there is no real guarantee of

stability, thus again reflecting the uselessness of the aid and lack of understanding that Alex

represents.

Perhaps most importantly, the events with Alex and the NGOs in Murder in Pacot all

happens amidst the backdrop of the couple trying to fix their house. As a formerly wealthy

household that wants nothing more than their old life, wealth, and pride back, Alex’s meddling

and Andremise’s bootlicking come across as incredibly unsettling. Even after the earthquake, the

couple really want nothing to do with Alex or Andremise, but they are forced to cohabitate with

them because of the performative suffering narrative that’s being forced upon them on an

international scale. Thus, the audience views the intrusion as a negative occurrence and

Andremise’s behaviour as suspect. Andremise may be desperate enough to play the white man’s

whore, but the unnamed couple certainly is not. When given a third point of perspective (in this

case that of the unnamed couple) aside from the intrusive Western ideal of minority suffering and

the minority actively performing said suffering, the audience can see the negativity that the cycle

perpetuates. This is where Murder in Pacot succeeds where Dheepan does not. The mere illusion

of the happy ending in Dheepan reduces the performative suffering trope to just a logical next
step in a linear road to success for refugees without regard to its problematic aspects, even more

so because the audience sees Dheepan utilize it so well. However, the conflict between Alex,

Andremise, and the unnamed couple in Murder in Pacot exposes the trope’s inherent

misunderstanding of minoirities in crisis as well as the intrusive problems it causes for the people

it is intended to help.
 Bibliography

Audiard, Jacques, director. Dheepan. UGC Distribution, 2015.

Hastie, A. (2016). I Know That Dog. Film Quarterly, 70(1), 100-106.

Peck, Raoul, director. Meurtre à Pacot. Doc&Film International, 2014.

Pressley-Sanon, Toni. “Black Camera Film Review.” Black Camera, vol. 7, no. 2, 2016, pp.
240–242., www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/blackcamera.7.2.240.

“Urban Margins: Un Prophète and Dheepan.” Decentring France: Multilingualism and Power in
Contemporary French Cinema, by Gemma King, Manchester University Press, 2019, pp.
84–118.

Wagner, Laura Rose. “Haiti Is a Sliding Land: Displacement, Community, and Humanitarianism
in Post-Earthquake Port-Au-Prince.” Thesis / Dissertation ETD, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2014, pp. 1–16.