Storyline
Director Laurent Cantet follows up his critically acclaimed “Time Out”, set during an austere wintertime in France and Switzerland, with Heading South, set in Haiti during the late 1970s. Based on stories by Dany Laferriere, the heat comes not only from the summertime tropical setting. Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young, and Louise Portal head a group of single middle-aged women who have come for sun, fun, and romance. They desire the solicitous attention of attractive young Haitian men, and teenaged Legba (Menothy Cesar, winner of the Marcello Mastroianni Award at the 2005 Venice Film Festival) is an especially prized companion for whom the women vie. The women tourists’ Queen Bee, Rampling, “is the ideal actress to convey” her Wellesley professor’s “liberated carnality, Bostonian snobbery and racism, plus a deep vulnerability” (Jay Weissberg, Variety). Heading South received the Cinema for Peace Award at Venice, and has been called “(a) gem…shattering” (Stephen Holden, New York Times.)
Click here to read the review by Stephen Holden of the New York Times
Charlotte Rampling and Ménothy César in a scene from “Heading South”.