Heading South

Heading South is Laurent Cantet's third film to be released in the US and it lives up to the promise of the first two. The first one to be released here was Human Resources which is the story of a young man who is hired by firm as the person who hires and fires people. The firm orders him to conduct a massive layoff of factory workers. One of these workers happens to be his father. The second film released here was Time Out. This film follows a man who has been laid off from his job. He does not tell his family about this. Every day he disappears in his car and they think that everything is normal. Of course they eventually find out what is really going on.

Heading South is also about work albeit a different type of work. The film focuses on three white women who frequent a resort in 1970s Haiti. Ellen (Charlotte Rampling) is the queen bee. She seems to know exactly what is going on and she is a domineering sort of person. She teaches college in Boston but at 55 she has given up on finding a man in her own age group. Brenda (Karen Young) who is from Georgia was previously there with her husband. The first time that she was there she seduced a young black boy named Legba (Menothy Cesar) who was only 15 at the time. That was the first time Brenda ever had an orgasm. Brenda is emotionally attached to Legba but she has fierce competition from Ellen who wants him all for herself. Sue (Louise Portal) is from Montreal and also feels that she cannot meet anyone at home. She becomes attached to another man at the resort. All of these women pay their men with either money or nice clothes and jewelry.

There are several themes running through the film. The obvious one is about these middle aged white women who are very lonely and come here to get affection from these men. Before I saw the film I thought that it was going to be quite "hot" but there is very little sex in it. It is more about longing and loneliness. What these women really want is love but they come to realize that no matter what they pay they are not going to get what they want.

The other theme of the film is political. When the film starts Albert (Lys Ambroise), who works at the resort, is at the airport to pick up Brenda. While he is waiting for her a woman approaches him and asks him to take her 15 year old daughter with him. She said that she used to be well off but her husband was murdered and everything has changed for her. This was the regime of Papa Doc and Baby Doc so things like this frequently happened. Not surprisingly, Albert refuses to take her daughter. Later on in the film we see that Albert has a great deal of disdain for Legba and his ilk. We also find out that Albert's family had no use for Americans and saw them only as conquerors and imperialists. And Legba has troubles of his own but the film doesn't go into them with any depth. A friend who saw the film thought that the ending was unclear but I think that what happened was not that surprising given what we have previously seen in the film.

I think that Heading South is an outstanding film. It is well written and directed. Cantet's previous films focused mainly on men. But in this film he shows that he really understands women. The three actresses are all terrific as is young Cesar as Legba. This is a film that everyone can see and like but it is really targeted at an audience that is very much neglected when it comes to making films - older women. My hats off to Cantet for making this film (and I look forward to his next one). When I came out of the theater I felt sad - sad for the women and sad for the people of Haiti. I can understand where these women were coming from. Everyone wants to feel loved and appreciated. It is just a matter of how far one would go to find it. And although I would never judge these women for what they did the thing that made me very sad is that they felt that they had to pay someone to "love" them. This says something about society and its attitude towards older (over 40) women. It is just a damn shame.