28895: Hermantin(News)Sexual adventuresses at play in 1970s Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Sexual adventuresses at play in 1970s Haiti




By Laura Kelly
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

August 11, 2006



It's important to regard with respect a film that evokes love, sex, death, fear 
and anger -- all in the first few moments.

Heading South (Vers Le Sud) does all that in its opening scene. An elderly, 
impoverished Haitian woman solicits an older employed gentleman to take 
possession of her beautiful teen daughter and save the girl from implied rape, 
torture or death.

"Being beautiful and poor in this country, she doesn't stand a chance," the 
woman says. The man, Albert, a waiter at a resort for wealthy tourists, turns 
her down, and the mother's anger seethes from somewhere deep inside her.

The scene sets a very straightforward and unabashed moralistic tone for the 
story to come, about handsome young Haitian Legba (Menothy Cesar), who works at 
the same resort as a gigolo to the foreign women who come in droves looking for 
companionship. Theirs is a sexual escapism amid wretched poverty and the 
political corruption of the 1970s.

The story is centered entirely around Legba's life, but -- an example of his 
powerlessness to change his own situation -- it is told by everyone except him.

First to speak directly to the camera is Brenda (Joe the King's delicious Karen 
Young), the smitten fortysomething Georgia woman who seduced/raped him when he 
was 15. Then Ellen (still sensual, cinematically adventurous Charlotte 
Rampling), a fiftysomething Bostonian quite proud of her direct approach to 
paying Legba with cash instead of gifts. Albert (Lys Ambroise) explains Haiti's 
ugly history with America. And finally, Canadian Sue (Louise Portal) talks 
about finding true love with another Haitian man.

Director and co-writer Laurent Cantet manages to conjure a languid mood that is 
disturbing at the same time. (He previously put a disturbing human face on the 
contemporary workplace with his well done Time Out and Human Resources.) But 
even as he escalates the violence -- and the viewer's understanding of the 
forces at work in Legba's life -- Cantet's message is too straightforward, 
employing an obvious moralism that verges on melodrama. That weakness is 
balanced by strong performances, especially newcomer Cesar, who received the 
Marcello Mastroianni award at Venice. Heading South also received the Venice 
fest's Cinema for Peace award.

Laura Kelly can be reached at lkelly@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4889.


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