"I'm crazy about love — sex and love, I'm not really sure anymore," declares Ellen (Charlotte Rampling), the haughty, brutally forthright queen bee in the gaggle of sex tourists frolicking through Laurent Cantet's devastating film Heading South.
"I always told myself that when I'm old I'd pay young men to love me," she continues in her best blasé manner. "I just didn't think it would happen so fast." A beautiful, unmarried 55-year-old teacher of French literature at Wellesley, Ellen has spent the last six summers vacationing at the Petite Anse, a seaside Haitian hotel frequented by poor black boys eager to provide sex to middle-age female guests who lavish them with money and gifts. Ellen, the resident philosopher among a group who picnic with their boyfriends on the beach, is a bossy know-it-all who is not quite as hard-boiled as she would like to imagine.
As Heading South narrows its focus to concentrate on Ellen; her favorite young lover, the handsome, sly 18-year-old Legba (Ménothy Cesar); and two of the women in her circle, it becomes one of the most truthful examinations ever filmed of desire, age and youth, and how easy it is to confuse erotic rapture with love.
"If you're over 40 and not as dumb as a fashion model, the only guys who are interested are natural born losers or husbands whose wives are cheating on them," Ellen tartly observes of the mating game as it applies to single women of a certain age.
But Heading South is much more than a dispassionate examination of middle-age desire. Adapted from three short stories by Dany Laferrière and set in the late 1970's, when Haiti was ruled by Jean-Claude Duvalier (nicknamed Baby Doc) and a cadre of thugs, this politically pointed film contemplates the darker social undercurrents beneath a seemingly benign example of sexual tourism. ...
With a screenplay in French, English and a smattering of Creole by Mr. Cantet and Robin Campillo, Heading South is a beautifully written, seamlessly directed film with award-worthy performances by Ms. Rampling and Ms. Young. ...” |
