Laurent Cantet's Heading South
- Producing Organization
- WBEZ
- Contributing Organization
- WBEZ (Chicago, Illinois)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/50-84mkm6k6
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- Description
- Description
- " Heading South Laurent Cantet's Heading South is an uncomfortable film to watch. No doubt it is Cantet's intent to disturb. What is uncomfortable is not the plot that finds three women at a Haitian beach resort on a sexual vacation, but the collision between the film's easily exploitable theme and its intent to analyze sex as a global commodity of colonialism and racism. The themes are not often in balance hence the film is unsettling, which is I'm sure what Cantet wants it to be. In Heading South , the veteran of the vacation in the tropics is Ellen, played by Charlotte Rampling. She's come to the hotel for the last six summers. There, her desires are fulfilled by half-naked black men. Her favorite is an 18-year-old boy named Legba. In the exclusive private resort, he is the star. Brenda, played by Karen Young, has come back to Haiti also to see Legba. Three years ago, he was 15 and gave Brenda her first orgasm when she was 45. She is from Georgia, on Valium and competes with Ellen for Legba's attention. The third character is Sue, played by Canadian actress Louise Portal, who has her own beach boy. The film is based on three short stories set in the Haiti of Baby Doc in the 1970s, written by Canadian-Haitian writer Danny Laferriere, perhaps best known for his novel How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired. What interests Cantet and Laferriere is not so much the eroticism of the trysts between middle-aged Caucasian women and young Haitian men but the dynamics. The women are full of concern and connected through lust or love to the young Haitian men. Nevertheless, they are colonizers, patronizingly exploiting the natural resources of an impoverished, Third World country. In the universe of Heading South , sex is the commodity. In another world, it might be oil or diamonds or iron ore. Unfortunately this politicized theme of Heading South is obfuscated by the personal interactions between Ellen, Brenda and Sue and their pursuit of sex. The most self-realized about her desires is Ellen. I always told myself that when I'm old I'd pay young men to love me, she says. I just didn't think it would happen so fast. She teaches French literature at Wellesley, and knows her options: If you're over 40 and not as dumb as a fashion model, the only guys who are interested are natural-born losers or husbands whose wives are cheating on them. The real theme of the film is delivered by the hotel's head waiter, Albert. Speaking to the camera, he reveals that he comes from an old Haitian family that fought the Americans in the 1915 occupation of the country. His hatred of the white visitors to Haiti comes from his grandfather who, Albert says, believed that the white man was an animal. If he knew Albert's occupation that he was a waiter for Americans, he would die of shame. The weapons which the whites are armed with, says Albert, are more dangerous than firearms. It's their dollars. Everything they touch, he says, turns to garbage. In a moving scene at the beginning of the film, as Albert arrives at the airport to pick up an arriving tourist, he is accosted by a mother who wants him to take her 15-year-old daughter. Being beautiful, she doesn't stand a chance in Haiti, her mother says. Sexual tourism is a central theme in Michel Houellebecq's novel, Platform . Like Houellebecq, Laurent Cantet is happy to play the role of the provocateur. Desire, expressed in sex tourism, is a commodity, traded in a global market. In this, Human Resources reflects the themes of Cantet's previous films Time Out and Human Resources , in which work the price of labor and class were the commodities creating personal divisions, family conflict and alienation. These themes may well be lost on some of the audience. The film has been a surprising success in its New York theatrical opening. It has led to a broad discussion of sex between older women and younger men, and sex for women over 60, but these are not the central concepts of the film. A blogger who had seen the film at the film festival in Vancouver, wrote this: A great topic and script headline Heading South' a movie about three women who vacation in Haiti in 1970s for the sun and surf, but mainly to bed any black men they can find (who are available for the price.) I mean, THAT'S fabulous! Who would've thought of that? The comment illuminates the danger of playing with explosive, provocative themes. The audience may enjoy the explosions and the provocation, and miss the meaning. That too, could be the fate of Heading South . This is Milos Stehlik for Chicago Public Radio's Worldview. Worldview film contributor Milos Stehlik is the director of Facets Multimedia. "
- Media type
- Sound
- Credits
-
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: WBEZ
Editor: Drew Hill
Producing Organization: WBEZ
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
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Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ-FM) and Vocalo.org
Identifier: (unknown)
Format: audio/mpeg
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- Citations
- Chicago: “Laurent Cantet's Heading South,” WBEZ, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed April 27, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-50-84mkm6k6.
- MLA: “Laurent Cantet's Heading South.” WBEZ, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. April 27, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-50-84mkm6k6>.
- APA: Laurent Cantet's Heading South. Boston, MA: WBEZ, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-50-84mkm6k6