Heading South
Let me warn you right away: This post will not do justice to this extraordinary movie. It was one of those late-night viewings that apparently I have to be careful about, because I allowed my concentration to lapse during what turned out to be a crucial scene, about midway through, that sets in motion events that lead to the heart-rending climax. I simply can’t accept that the plot elements that spring from this scene are as elliptical as they felt to me, because Laurent Cantet’s direction is so spot-on throughout. I just didn’t entirely grasp the subtext of the conversation, and that threw me. I need to see it again.
My own shortcomings aside, “Heading South” is a marvel. It brings thrilling complexity to the subject of sex tourism by middle-aged women, rooting the practice in the ideal time and place: Haiti in the late 1970s. The women exist in that beautiful post-sexual revolution, pre-AIDS bubble, while their dark-skinned boytoys inhabit a climate of corruption, paranoia and economic stagnation under dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.
Cantet begins with a chilling conversation, as a woman tries to persuade a dignified, middle-aged man to take her 15-year-old daughter as his bride. When a Haitian girl has the twin curses of beauty and poverty, the woman argues, she is doomed. She is certain to be taken by Baby Doc’s secret police. The man politely refuses. He is well-groomed and wears a coat and tie. A businessman, perhaps? No. He is the proprietor of a resort favored by women who enjoy no-strings sex with much-younger men; he’s at the airport to pick up one such woman, Brenda (Karen Young).
As we soon learn, Brenda is no ordinary sex tourist, if there is such a thing. She believes herself to be in love with the teenager she bedded on a previous visit, when she was still married, and that puts her at odds with the resort’s imperious queen bee, Ellen (Charlotte Rampling), who has claimed the boy, Legba (Ménothy Cesar), for her bed. Brenda was the first foreigner Legba slept with, and since then, Legba, now 18, has blossomed into a successful gigolo. He feels some loyalty to her but knows it’s bad for business.
Cantet has an expansive understanding of these exploitative but genuinely affectionate relationships. Brenda, Ellen and Sue (Louise Portal) get soliloquies in which they explain their reasons for coming to Haiti for sex. When they finish talking, we feel we know them intimately. And we see how the beautiful, almond-eyed Legba becomes a lightning rod for conflict. He, too, is fully rounded. He has his own dreams and frustrations, played simply and eloquently by Cesar, in his first film. “Heading South” is a real movie, one that summons a time and place and the people who inhabit it with unforced authority. It’s a scintillating work of art.