Heading South (Vers le Sud): No Exit

Laurent Cantet established an international reputation with Time Out (2001). The film, like Human Resources (1998), his first feature, is set in contemporary France, male-centred and concerns the professional and personal pressures imposed on the protagonist. In contrast, Heading South is set in Haiti in the late 1970s, when it was still under the control of Baby Doc Duvalier. The film deals with sexual exploitation, both among Haitians and third-world sex tourism, the latter in the form of three middle-aged, middle-class, white North American women holidaying in the country. Two of the women, Ellen/Charlotte Rampling and Brenda/Karen Young, are involved with the same young man, Legba/Menothy Cesar, around whom the story revolves. Heading South's pre-credit sequence introduces Brenda after she has arrived at the airport and is about to be picked up by Albert/Lys Ambroise, the Haitian manager of the resort where she will be staying. Albert, waiting for her, is approached by a middle-aged Haitian woman who asks him to buy her young daughter. She tells him that her husband has been taken away by the police and that she has no money to care of her child. The woman says she fears her daughter, who is beautiful, will be taken from her and sold into prostitution. Albert politely listen but tells her there is nothing he can do. The woman, in response, tells him everyone wears a mask and warns that it's hard to tell the good from the bad ones. The notion of wearing a mask is taken up soon after when each of the women, in the privacy of their room, directly address the camera, speaking candidly about themselves. Although the device may be a bit awkward, disrupting the narrative's flow, it is necessary to the depiction of the women that the viewer has access to their inner lives. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Brenda, settled in at the hotel, goes in search of Legba, whom she finds alone, curled-up and resting on the beach. He remembers her and they have a friendly conversation which is interrupted by Ellen who calls him over, asking him to join her and several other women. Ellen, who teaches French at Wellesley and has been coming to the resort for the past six years, is playful but clearly in control of those around her. Sue/Louise Portal, a French Canadian who works in a factory, is also introduced; she is easy going and appears to be genuinely comfortable with her surroundings. In contrast, Brenda, a housewife and divorcee from Savannah, Georgia, gives the impression of being shy and reserved. The beach sequence is followed by one in which Brenda, who is introduced formally by the means of a black/white inter-title, confides to the viewer. She tells us that she visited the resort three years ago with her husband and during the stay she had sex on the beach with a teenaged boy (Legba). The camera tracks in and Brenda's story becomes more intimate. She says that the encounter, which she initiated, produced, at the age of forty-five, her first orgasm. Brenda's retelling of the experience reduces her to tears. The monologue, although sexually explicit, isn't erotic; instead, it is Brenda's attempt to account for her past life and the return trip to Haiti. (The sequence itself evokes Bibi Andersson's famous sex-on-the beach monologue from Persona). Her confession is the film's most intimate moment and it shifts the register of Heading South away from the implicitly sensationalistic to that of a disturbing character study. Brenda has become an insecure and desperate woman seeking physical fulfilment and a validation of her desirability. The sequence also establishes Cantet's central concern which is the underlying reasons why these women have come to Haiti to have sex. Karen Young's performance is wonderful. In the course of the monologue, Brenda becomes sympathetic and almost accessible; but, as the film progresses, and Brenda acts more openly on her need to fulfil her desires for sexual gratification and romance, Young makes her a very unsettling presence. …

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