Review: Heading South

RECOMMENDED
(Vers le Sud, 2005) Laurent Cantet’s “Human Resources” and “Time Out” are among the most pungent (and starkly political) critiques of alienation in modern life, and despite its trappings as a story about 1970s sex tourism in Haiti (based on short stories by Dany Laferriere), “Heading South” falls squarely within his themes. Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young and Louise Portal are a trio among the middle-aged women who travel to the Caribbean to enjoy the sun and buy the services of younger local men, especially the teenager Legba (Menothy Cesar). The performances are brave and open, especially Young’s.  While not entirely convincing, and evasive in some ways about the Duvalier-era setting, Rampling’s amazing stare is a compensation, as are several of the to-camera monologues and their underlying, implicit critiques of colonialism and entitlement. Laferriere wrote something interesting about his book: “Physical desire and sex, as a political metaphor, seemed to me to be the fundamental element, something extraordinary, because, in a society where the relationships between social classes are so terrifying, where the gap between the rich and the poor is so huge, where humiliation, disdain, contempt for others is so intense, the only thing that can bring one particular person closer to another is physical desire. I’m not describing an innocent form of sexuality, but sexuality as an instrument of political, social or economic power.’ And so it goes…  105m. (Ray Pride)