"Heading South"

July 7, 2006 | Any movie that addresses not just sexual politics but the uneasy blending of sex and politics is bound to get under people's skin. Laurent Cantet's "Heading South" is set in Haiti in the late '70s, at a resort where older white women -- from the States, Europe and Canada -- come to enjoy the company of, and to have sex with, beautiful young local men. This is a pleasure that they pay for -- if not outright, then by bestowing gifts on their young friends; their economic power gives them sexual power, something they're lacking in their everyday lives. And here, their age isn't a factor. Their money makes them just as desirable a catch as any younger woman would be back home.

The exchange of sex for money -- even if it's women doing the buying -- is by itself a recipe for controversy, and the colonialist overtones of this setup magnify that potential tenfold. Yet the only truly controversial thing about "Heading South" is that it refuses to render easy moral, or political, judgments. Cantet adapted the script from a book of short stories by the Haitian writer Dany Laferrière. The press notes for "Heading South" quote an interview Laferrière gave when the book, "La Chair du Maître," was published. Laferrière said he was interested in using physical desire and sex as a political metaphor, particularly in a setting where the gap between the rich and the poor is so huge. (The women visitors are rich in the context of Haiti's poverty, although at home, they'd be solidly upper-middle-class.) But even in business transactions, of any sort, human emotions are unpredictable: "We're dealing with a small group of very rich people who can buy anything, or who think they can buy anything, people or objects, and with others who are ready to sell the only thing they possess, their youth and their body. I wanted to find out if in this exchange, in this trade, where flesh meets flesh, there wasn't something more."

Cantet is also interested in that "something more," and "Heading South" is his unassuming map of that complex, indefinable terrain. Cantet is among the least arrogant of directors. He's not a bomb-thrower, like the incandescent Catherine Breillat, or a mischievous, sensuous brainteaser, like Claire Denis. You wouldn't expect "Heading South" to be any sort of political screed (even though it's acutely aware of political realities). And no one who has seen Cantet's painfully intense "Time Out" -- about a man who loses his job and goes to great lengths to hide it from his friends and family -- could accuse Cantet of being blind to issues of money, status and class. It's simply that moral indignation doesnt interest him. He's a humble and compassionate director, interested chiefly in how people respond in unexpected ways to difficult situations -- situations that most of us, from the cushy chairs of our movie seats, feel confident we'd know how to handle.

There's no such certainty among the characters in "Heading South": Brenda (Karen Young) is a married Savannah, Ga., woman approaching 50 who comes to the resort to reconnect with Legba (a wonderful non-professional actor named Menothy Cesar), a young man she'd met on a visit three years earlier, when he was just 15. Legba remembers Brenda, and seems fond of her. But he's very much in demand at the resort: Many of the women vie for his company, but Ellen (Charlotte Rampling) feels especially protective of -- and possessive of -- him, although she tries hard to hide it.

Ellen is a crisp English expat who teaches French literature at Wellesley but spends every summer in this place where she can purchase the illusion of being desired. Even though she's just a visitor, she pretty much runs the joint. She can be scathingly critical of the other women, and even here, where money can buy a sort of love, she's fiercely competitive. But her matter-of-factness about her situation -- as a woman in her mid-50s, in whom few men back home would take any interest -- is touchingly direct: "I always told myself that when I grew old, I would pay young men to love me," she tells Brenda, with a sharp little laugh. "I just didn't think it would happen so fast."

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