‘Little Jaffna’: Red Sea Review

Dir: Lawrence Valin. France. 2024. 100mins 

An undercover cop fears he may be in too deep in Little Jaffna, a well-executed crime drama with a familiar narrative arc. Making his feature directorial debut with an expansion of his 2018 short of the same name, Lawrence Valin also stars as a policeman tasked with infiltrating an immigrant Paris criminal organisation helping to finance a liberation movement back home in Sri Lanka, only to find himself questioning both his identity and his loyalty. A stripped-down approach and strong performances elevate a somewhat predictable story.

The specificity of this tale of cops and gangsters gives the film resonance

Little Jaffna won Red Sea’s AlUla Audience Award after premiering in Venice Critics’ Week and playing in festivals including Tokyo and Zurich. Examining the Tamil diaspora — in particular, in France — the picture should continue to enjoy steady festival play, heading next for Les Arcs. Valin’s debut is more of a slow-burn affair than an action-packed thriller, which might curtail commercial prospects. Nonetheless, audiences seeking a crime film with socio-political underpinnings should be pleased.

The film gets its name from a district in Paris populated by Tamil immigrants, and Valin plays Michael, a young local cop with roots in Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers, the militant liberation organisation. Living in France with his grandmother since he was a boy, Michael has been assigned to go undercover and befriend members of the Killiz, a gang led by feared boss Aya (Vela Ramamoorthy), who demands levies from Tamil businesses and families in order to fund the Sri Lankan resistance movement. Michael has essentially been raised as a European, but the more time he spends with the Killiz, the more he feels a connection to the land he left behind.

Valin is a sympathetic presence as Michael, who proves to be a fascinating cipher. His reactions muted and his temperament always calm, this cop quickly finds acceptance in the gang because he does nothing to raise suspicions. For one thing, Michael, who has long been accustomed to eating with silverware, must acquiesce to the gang’s insistence he honour his Tamil heritage by using his hands. But these small adjustments hint at more profound reckonings occurring internally — including an acknowledgement of his late father’s dark past in Sri Lanka, which Michael has not come to terms with. 

Cinematographer Maxence Lemonnier captures a vibrant, impoverished section of Paris in which rival Tamil gangs jockey for power. (The Killiz’ principal adversaries are the Sura, which creates problems once a high-ranking Killiz lieutenant plans on marrying the sister of a Sura member.) But Little Jaffna never turns these conflicts into a slick gangland thriller filled with operatic shootouts. Instead, Valin soberly examines how a displaced community learns to survive in a foreign country — especially when the members of that community squabble among themselves. The film’s violence is spare and intimate, and therefore more shocking: cricket bats, fists and even a large dead tuna are used to resolve disputes.

Tellingly, Michael is only occasionally seen meeting with his police liaison, the film mostly embedding this cop inside the gang – a tense assignment that begins to affect how he sees the ongoing struggle between the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government determined to eradicate them. Michael wants to find enough evidence to bring the Killiz to justice, but his surety slips away once he begins to feel a kinship to this community — presumably, a kinship he has tried and failed to achieve within the largely white Paris police force. 

The film’s gang members may be types, but Valin (who also co-wrote the screenplay) works to ensure that they have enough nuance so that we understand their justification for their criminal enterprises. Ramamoorthy exudes a stern authority as Aya, who becomes an unlikely father figure for Michael, who has been without one since his dad’s tragic passing. And Puviraj Raveendran brings vulnerability to the role of Puvi, the Killiz lieutenant whose romantic aspirations will, unsurprisingly, lead to plot complications. Viewers will be able to anticipate where Little Jaffna is going, but the specificity of this tale of cops and gangsters gives the film resonance.