Ninnies go ‘South’ in dismal film

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, August 24, 2006

The setting may be the Caribbean and the subject may be tourists seeking sexual rejuvenation, but “Heading South” is hardly a case of women getting their groove back. This is a dour, politically inflected look at class, gender and race.

“Heading South” is set in Haiti at the end of the 1970s, when sex tourism was apparently flourishing during a dictatorial regime. At a secluded beach resort, middle-age women enjoy the company of young local men, who in turn enjoy the women’s money.

At the center of this group, though not really our main focus, is Ellen (Charlotte Rampling), an elegant academic who has been frequenting the resort for a few years. Her view is lofty and detached, although it’s hard to stay that way when the subject is sex.

Entirely less composed is Brenda (Karen Young), who visited the place three years earlier and had the first orgasm of her life with a local named Legba (Menothy Cesar). Now divorced (perhaps understandably), she returns to find him again.

Legba is shared by a number of the ladies, and it’s inevitable that the haughty Ellen and the grasping Brenda will clash.

One expects that French filmmaker Laurent Cantet, who made “Human Resources” and the extraordinary “Time Out” (about a man who keeps pretending to go to work after he loses his job), will give this situation a socio-political context.

He does, but we understand the mercenary sex-for-hire system in the first half-hour. After that, the movie tends to wallow. This is a strangely one-note film, and we aren’t meant to care about the characters enough to enjoy the film in a conventional way.

The women are self-absorbed ninnies who don’t see the exploitative nature of their tourism as a problem. Charlotte Rampling (late of “Swimming Pool”) is expert at this kind of jaded cool, so at least we can enjoy the actress. The talented Karen Young, who always looks bruised by life, is less certain with the more unstable Brenda.

This film raises questions. Unspoken in the portrait of sex as commerce is the memory that a few years after the film’s events, Haiti was one of the first places where AIDS was identified in high concentrations. That underscores the soiled nature of this supposed paradise for privileged visitors wearing blinders.

A scene from “Heading South.”