Heading South (2006)

The real problem with this movie is NOT that it depicts "women having fun", as another reviewer stated. It's that the women who were having the fun were disproportionately powerful in relation to the men with whom they were having the fun. The relationships were clearly exploitative, and the women were clearly lacking in awareness into their own motivations. So, for example, at least two of the three women (Ellen and Brenda) were in love, or at the very least emotionally dependent upon their relationship with the main male protagonist, Legba. Yet they seemed, for the most part, to be oblivious to their own inner workings and feelings.As such, it was impossible to feel any empathy for any of the women in this film. If that was the director's intent, then he succeeded. Furthermore, if it was the director's intent to show the power imbalance between the women and the men in this film, then I'd have to say he succeeded in that as well. But ironically, these apparent successes were achieved in spite of, rather than because of, the words the characters were saying. And that's usually a bad thing in a film. Unless, of course, that really was the director's intent from the start. In that case, he did an excellent job of portraying stupid, selfish, arrogant, Colonialist middle aged white women exploiting the poor residents of an oppressed country.

Brenda arrives in 70s Haiti looking to find the then 15-year-old Legba, a street waif she took in and ultimately seduced, awakening her own long suppressed sexual longings. When she gets there the boy has become a man, a male prostitute servicing defiant but ultimately self-deluding middle-aged women.Karen Young is excellent as the clingy, needy Brenda, hopelessly believing that romantic love can prevail amongst the sexual and political squalor of corrupt, poverty-stricken Haiti. Her performance is matched by Charlotte Rampling as steely Ellen, the alpha female of the beach-and-boys set who appears to be in control, until Brenda's arrival strips her facade away and shows she, too, is hopelessly lost. The women see themselves as enjoying a pleasure their own Western world has denied them, wantonly ignorant of their own corrosive influence.Ménothy Cesar as Legba is a powerful screen presence and brings humanity and surprises to a difficult role. The film makes strange choices: having characters talk directly to camera documentary style, for example. This economically condenses much of the story, but ultimately felt like a cheat. Legba's ill-fated dalliance with an ex serves to seal his fate in a way that wraps things up too neatly and so conflicts with the greater socioeconomic, and human, issues that the film had attempted to introduce.Wonderful acting, but a storyline that is at times pat and ultimately too earnest in its telling.

spoilersWe are at a small Haitian beach resort in the 1970s, which is frequented by North American, middle-aged, single women looking for readily available Haitian boy-toys, cheap and attentive, to enliven their vacation. Two women from the U.S., Ellen and Brenda, meet and become casual friends in the bonne homme of a small resort, but their friendship is soon strained to mere politeness as they find themselves competing for the attention of the same beautiful, young man, Legba, with whom they are both infatuated. There are scenes of genuine eroticism and sensuality between the young man and the two women, but what seems lost on both women as they allow their competition to escalate their attachment, is that neither is of significant interest to Legba. He is a seasonal worker, like roofers and house painters back home; his trade happens to be gigolo during the tourist season. When the season is over, he has his normal life with a mother struggling to make ends meet, a girl-friend, and the pervasive strong-arm government corruption that haunts the lives of the island country. As the women increasing fling themselves, money, and other enticements at Legba's feet, it does not occur to them that he is not in love, nor in danger of falling in love with them, which makes their passion all the more poignant and pathetic.An interesting point is made as the 3 leading women are having a frank, after dinner discussion about the fun of having boy-toys at the disposal, summed up with the statement, " …the difference is that the white men our age back home aren't really horny." This was met with knowing grins and chuckles. The ironic point is that you can be sure at tables of other sex-tourism locations, men are having after dinner conversations agreeing that… the difference is that the white women our age back home aren't really horny. I find this film difficult to peg as it doesn't fit the usual genres: drama, romance or sex-comedy. 2 days reflection later I added this:Heading South may be a problem for some viewers, it was for me; of the type, not seeing the forest for the trees— because I forgot what frames all. The film opens to an earnest, middle-aged Haitian woman offering her teenage daughter to a stranger she thinks is leaving the country, because she believes it is only a matter of time before the girl will be kidnapped, raped and murdered by one of the bands of thugs which the Haitian government used to help rule the country by terror. This mother figures her daughter has a better chance surviving with a nice looking stranger in another country, than staying with her own mother in violent and corrupt Haiti. Then near the end of the film we see the bodies of two Haitian dumped on the beach at night because they had offended some government sponsored thug of one of the death squads. When focused through these two horrific lens, the middle-aged, middle class ennui of three vacationing white women, so absorbing to them, becomes pathetically self-indulgent, as they use their petty cash unthinking to add yet another exploitation on the poor 3rd world people who work at the resort.

Everyone despises male sex tourism. But there also is a female counterpart. This movie tells about middle-aged women, going to Haiti in the 70s. They give the native boys presents and get sex instead.But that's not the whole truth. This is also about love tourism, because obviously these women have serious crushes on particularly one boy.Is it just another form of imperialism or is it more complex? Why do we somehow pity these women, while we're condemning men in the same situation? This movie puts questions you didn't want to hear and turns things around.