Path well travelled

by RICHARD JONES

SET in Haiti during the late 1970s, Laurent Cantet's confronting film 'Heading South' is a story about late middle-aged women who journey to the Caribbean with one thing in mind.

They are sex tourists, besotted by the trim young men they find at the beach resorts.

Chief among their number is the mesmerising Ellen (Charlote Rampling), a sort of queen bee for the wealthy women of these hives. Their hives are the resort hotels. Because of their Western affluence the women can easily afford the rooms and services, which the hotels provide.

But Cantet reminds us that this is the era when brutal dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier ruled. His regime crushed the people of Haiti and a nod from one of his goons could disrupt the life of any young woman the big boss fancied.

In 'Heading South' the women's holiday in their comfortable resort hotel is disrupted by American Brenda (Karen Young). She'd had an affair a few years earlier with Ellen's consort Legba (Menothy Cesar) and the Haitian idyll had awoken discontent within Brenda's own marriage. This time she's set on snaring Legba permanently, a possibility Ellen is aware of and super keen to ensure fails.

The poverty just outside the walls of their hotel doesn't seem to concern Ellen, Brenda and Sue (Louise Portal). They're concentrating on their own liaisons and for Ellen and Brenda the tug-of-war over Legba.

The director doesn't directly name Duvalier or his dreaded enforcers, the Tonton Macoutes yet he maps Haiti's obvious social hierarchy through some telling scenes from Legba's other life - his life outside the hotel.

Still, Cantet doesn't preach to us. He's interested in the implications of people's actions and the contradictions of late 20th century life exemplified by the poverty just up the road from the swish resort hotels.

2 april 2007

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