Heading South
Starring Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young, Menothy Cesar.
When this film was released in New York last year, women in their fifties and sixties flocked to see it, excited to see a film dealing with the sexuality of older women. Despite this theme, Heading South is far from being a sweet chick flick in the vein of Something’s Gotta Give. Set in Haiti during the time of “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s oppressive regime, this new film from French director Laurent Cantet is a complex story about the connection between sex, pleasure, poverty and exploitation, and a group of American women who learn how to turn it to their advantage.
Heading South opens with a scene in a Haitian airport in the late 1970s. An older black man stands waiting to pick up an American woman who is coming to stay at the hotel where he works. As he waits, he is approached by a middle-aged Haitian woman who calmly tells him that she wants to give him her daughter. The daughter is apparently only fifteen years old and he has no idea who she is, but the woman explains that the government has recently made her husband “disappear” and that she is now frightened for her child. She says that her daughter is beautiful, and she loves her, and she doesn’t want the same thing to happen to her. The man tells her that he can’t help her and gets on with his job. However, this woman has already highlighted one of the film’s main concerns: that to be beautiful and poor in a place like this is a dangerous thing.
The film’s main female characters, Ellen, Brenda and Sue, are three middle-aged women from North America who have discovered that in Haiti, getting their sexual and sensual needs met is simple. In this third world country their money buys them a good time in the sun, sea and sand, and most appealingly, the services of the local black boys. Their favourite is Legba, although the women know little about him other than the fact that he is poor and good with women. The women cavort at the hotel oblivious to what is going on in Haiti outside the resort, but as political tension mounts, it can only be a matter of time before the realities of this troubled paradise catch up with all of them.
Some critics have said that Heading South is not easy to watch, and I would have to agree with them. The sight of forty and fifty-something-year-old women displaying unbridled lust and being massaged on a beach by teenage prostitutes is an unusual one in cinema, and when presented with it I found it a little confronting. The actors seem to wear little to no makeup and there’s a lot of cellulite to be seen, as well as scrawny limbs, wrinkles, freckles, and graying hair. The visuals aside, the most unnerving aspect of the film for me was the sense of entitlement the women seem to go to Haiti with. Is it especially confronting because we’re not so used to seeing women in these kinds of positions of sexual and financial power? It has to be asked whether people would find it as difficult to watch if the genders of the characters were reversed — why or why not?
Heading South is based on three short stories by Haitian writer Dany Laferriere, and although its direct-to-camera monologues make it obvious that it’s adapted from a book, it’s well-written in general. The cast and acting are also very good. It was acclaimed at the Venice Film Festival in 2005, receiving the Cinema for Peace Award and the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Menothy Cesar, the talented young actor who plays Legba.
It’s the sort of film that makes you think, and since sex tourism remains prevalent in many countries, it’s highly relevant to the world today. In the end I felt it’s not so much about women dealing a blow for older women everywhere, as perpetuating a cycle of exploitation that they have no interest in recognizing.
4 Stars
Madeline Bradford-Becker
