French writer-director Laurent Cantet creates films in which an intimate drama of well etched characters plays out within a broader subtext, a backdrop that focuses on some larger social issue. Heading South is about unattached white women of sufficient means to enjoy Caribbean vacations and indulge their sexual appetites with local men. This story is set against the misery of an impoverished underclass in early 1970s Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Charlotte Rampling plays Ellen, a college English teacher in Boston who's been coming to a particular beachfront hotel for years. She spends all summer. Unsentimental, lusty and outspoken, she pays for the attentions of Legba (Ménothy César) a lovely young lad of 18 who can make Ellen come when she merely thinks about him. She has no illusions about this arrangement, or so it seems for a while. She knows that Legba services many tourists like her, makes his living this way, probably supports his family as well. She's the ringleader of a circle of women, each with a favorite local gigolo in tow.
Upsetting this idyllic arrangement, Brenda (Karen Young) arrives on the scene. She's the antithesis of Ellen, a mopey, sad sack of a woman, 10 years Ellen's junior but with none of the older woman's appeal. Brenda's a terminal romantic and entirely self-centered. She had in fact seduced Legba three years earlier, when he was 15, has thought of him daily since then, and, following a divorce, is now returning to find and take up with him again. She's in love.
Brenda boldly lays claim to Legba, who tries to service her on the side while still maintaining his connection to Ellen. No way. Initially amused by Brenda's earnestness, Ellen gradually reveals that she is not as tough as she would have people believe. She is deeply hurt and angry in fact when Legba rejects her to spend more time exclusively with Brenda.
Legba is playing his own game. He's not in love with Brenda. But she is giving him plenty of gifts. If anything, he toys with her sober infatuation, perhaps finds it a refreshing change of pace from Ellen's frankness and mock insults. But Brenda isn't playing by the rules. This throws everybody off and ratchets up tensions.
We begin to see into Legba's his town life, where the picture is far from rosy. A destitute mother. An old girlfriend who has become the mistress of a wealthy gangster but begs for Legba's company. We see him interrupt a street soccer match to rescue his young sidekick Eddy from possible arrest or worse by a cop who drinks a pop from the boy's sidewalk stand without paying, and kicks over the stand when Eddy protests.
Ellen learns that Legba is in trouble, hunted by a gunman who works for the gangster. She begs him to let her help, to protect him, even to go to Boston with her to live, but he won't hear of it. We can see that she cares for his welfare in a genuine sense. But the gulf between them, which Ellen had lulled herself into ignoring, is ever present to Legma.
We receive a fuller, more insightful picture of Haitian sensibilities toward whites from Albert (Lys Ambroise), the chief factotum of management at the hotel. We get Albert's take through a long aside, a soliloquy spoken into the camera, directly to us. Ellen, Brenda and Sue take their turns giving us information on their backgrounds and sentiments in using the same dramatic device. Always a perilous film tactic, it works well here. Albert's contempt for the white overclass runs deep, a passion that had been passed down from his grandparents.
He speaks of the power of American money over the poor local population. Where the French stole their independence, and the Duvaliers stole their worldly goods, the Americans are stealing their dignity, and right under Albert's nose. As he sees it, the young native men hustling tourist women, trading sex for money and baubles, are degrading themselves, but feel forced to do so to make a living.
For his part, Legba is also deeply sensitive to these circumstances. He has little trouble recognizing Brenda as his original seducer, and is enraged when he sees her dirty dancing with young Eddy on the beach. It isn't at all clear that any of the women, not Brenda, not even Ellen, can fathom the broader context and harsher ironies underlying their connections with their boyfriends. Ellen says she has no interest in going into town, that it's a bore. We can surmise that Legba would much prefer to live his life among his own people and no longer prostitute himself. Ellen's notion of how best to help him is, for all her seeming savvy, naive.
We can hope that the screenplay is authentic, for it is based on three short stories by the native Haitian novelist Dany Laferrière, who was born in 1953 in Port-au-Prince. He was a late teenager himself in the years when this script is set. He abruptly left Haiti in 1976, fearing for his life, and has lived in Montreal since (spending some time in Miami as well).
Cantet never insults the viewer's intelligence by dispensing sociologic wisdom or overreaching with his chosen conceits. The characters play out their lives on vividly realistic terms. By the end some people have died, and the principal women have exchanged psychological places. Ellen, now bereft and vulnerable, goes home to Boston and, presumably, a life of embitterment. In the final scene we see a refreshed Brenda, journeying off to tour more islands, bound for new adventures, now acting the sexual predator, but dragging her wrecking ball behind her. Filmed on location in Haiti. (In French & English) My grades: 8.5/10 (A-) (Seen on 09/21/06)
Charlotte Rampling plays Ellen, a college English teacher in Boston who's been coming to a particular beachfront hotel for years. She spends all summer. Unsentimental, lusty and outspoken, she pays for the attentions of Legba (Ménothy César) a lovely young lad of 18 who can make Ellen come when she merely thinks about him. She has no illusions about this arrangement, or so it seems for a while. She knows that Legba services many tourists like her, makes his living this way, probably supports his family as well. She's the ringleader of a circle of women, each with a favorite local gigolo in tow.
Upsetting this idyllic arrangement, Brenda (Karen Young) arrives on the scene. She's the antithesis of Ellen, a mopey, sad sack of a woman, 10 years Ellen's junior but with none of the older woman's appeal. Brenda's a terminal romantic and entirely self-centered. She had in fact seduced Legba three years earlier, when he was 15, has thought of him daily since then, and, following a divorce, is now returning to find and take up with him again. She's in love.
Brenda boldly lays claim to Legba, who tries to service her on the side while still maintaining his connection to Ellen. No way. Initially amused by Brenda's earnestness, Ellen gradually reveals that she is not as tough as she would have people believe. She is deeply hurt and angry in fact when Legba rejects her to spend more time exclusively with Brenda.
Legba is playing his own game. He's not in love with Brenda. But she is giving him plenty of gifts. If anything, he toys with her sober infatuation, perhaps finds it a refreshing change of pace from Ellen's frankness and mock insults. But Brenda isn't playing by the rules. This throws everybody off and ratchets up tensions.
We begin to see into Legba's his town life, where the picture is far from rosy. A destitute mother. An old girlfriend who has become the mistress of a wealthy gangster but begs for Legba's company. We see him interrupt a street soccer match to rescue his young sidekick Eddy from possible arrest or worse by a cop who drinks a pop from the boy's sidewalk stand without paying, and kicks over the stand when Eddy protests.
Ellen learns that Legba is in trouble, hunted by a gunman who works for the gangster. She begs him to let her help, to protect him, even to go to Boston with her to live, but he won't hear of it. We can see that she cares for his welfare in a genuine sense. But the gulf between them, which Ellen had lulled herself into ignoring, is ever present to Legma.
We receive a fuller, more insightful picture of Haitian sensibilities toward whites from Albert (Lys Ambroise), the chief factotum of management at the hotel. We get Albert's take through a long aside, a soliloquy spoken into the camera, directly to us. Ellen, Brenda and Sue take their turns giving us information on their backgrounds and sentiments in using the same dramatic device. Always a perilous film tactic, it works well here. Albert's contempt for the white overclass runs deep, a passion that had been passed down from his grandparents.
He speaks of the power of American money over the poor local population. Where the French stole their independence, and the Duvaliers stole their worldly goods, the Americans are stealing their dignity, and right under Albert's nose. As he sees it, the young native men hustling tourist women, trading sex for money and baubles, are degrading themselves, but feel forced to do so to make a living.
For his part, Legba is also deeply sensitive to these circumstances. He has little trouble recognizing Brenda as his original seducer, and is enraged when he sees her dirty dancing with young Eddy on the beach. It isn't at all clear that any of the women, not Brenda, not even Ellen, can fathom the broader context and harsher ironies underlying their connections with their boyfriends. Ellen says she has no interest in going into town, that it's a bore. We can surmise that Legba would much prefer to live his life among his own people and no longer prostitute himself. Ellen's notion of how best to help him is, for all her seeming savvy, naive.
We can hope that the screenplay is authentic, for it is based on three short stories by the native Haitian novelist Dany Laferrière, who was born in 1953 in Port-au-Prince. He was a late teenager himself in the years when this script is set. He abruptly left Haiti in 1976, fearing for his life, and has lived in Montreal since (spending some time in Miami as well).
Cantet never insults the viewer's intelligence by dispensing sociologic wisdom or overreaching with his chosen conceits. The characters play out their lives on vividly realistic terms. By the end some people have died, and the principal women have exchanged psychological places. Ellen, now bereft and vulnerable, goes home to Boston and, presumably, a life of embitterment. In the final scene we see a refreshed Brenda, journeying off to tour more islands, bound for new adventures, now acting the sexual predator, but dragging her wrecking ball behind her. Filmed on location in Haiti. (In French & English) My grades: 8.5/10 (A-) (Seen on 09/21/06)