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Reviews Counted:81
Fresh:56
Rotten:25
Average Rating:6.7/10
Consensus: As touching as it is disturbing, Heading South is an unconventional exploration of desire and longing, with superb performances and direction.
Theatrical Release:07-07-2006
Synopsis: Laurent Cantet's feature film stars Charlotte Rampling and is set in 1970s Haiti. The film examines a time and place in which wealthy women from the east headed to the country in search of sexual... [More]
It’s a delight; an entertaining, moving, audacious and stimulating conversation about happiness, love, jealousy, fear, race, sex, class, and social and colonial oppression -- in short, the relationship between the personal and the political.
Top CriticThe film is rich, cultured and slightly tiresome.
Heading South is a well-crafted adaptation of three short stories about rich, white, middle-aged North American women travelling through 70s Haiti in search of no-strings sex with young black men.
Top CriticAs a glimpse into a curious subculture this provokes interest, but in dramatic and political terms it’s a missed opportunity.
Top CriticHeading South is a beautifully shot, superbly acted, thought-provoking and ultimately moving film with superb performances from all concerned.
It also boasts another rich performance by Charlotte Rampling who continues to grow more interesting as an actress.
Director Laurent Cantet dabbles in the waters of change with great subtlety.
A movie about middle-aged women frolicking with smooth-skinned Haitian locals on the beach can be either erotic and sensual, or exploitive and pointless.
Heading South opens up a fascinating world of complexities, some of which are there on the screen although others open up only once the horizon line moves past the screen's edge.
In the end, the pretense of romance is what you walk away with. It might have made a memorable study of dark needs if it didn't wear down its vitality with so much dispiriting weakness.
A fascinating French film about two cultures in collision and the sexual drives of middle-age women vacationing in Haiti.
Una película lúcida y algo desconcertante sobre los deseos y fantasías de un trío de mujeres en vacaciones, con el trasfondo de la dura realidad haitiana del régimen de Duvalier.
A nervy but muddleheaded work ... with sharply unpleasant things to say about the First World's moral strip-mining of the Third but an overly tactful way of saying them.
A compact drama boiling over with political and sexual subtext, Heading South gives us yet another opportunity to soak up the wonder that is Charlotte Rampling.
Cantet's pictures are screwball comedies played straight
The women are meant to level the emotional playing field and add depth to what is, at heart, a story about the exploitation of poor nations by rich and powerful ones. But they wind up being too bitter and unstable to elicit much sympathy.
Top CriticRampling and Young give all kinds of subtle shadings to their performances and their dual scenes of leaving the island, one broken-hearted and accompanied by 'old' Haiti, the other finding a new, horrific exhilaration, deliver a final, resounding punch.
Heading South represents a very different direction for [director] Cantet from his previous film [Time Out] and the result is satisfying in its own way.
While an important message is at the movie's core, Cantet just can't find a way to make us care.
The regal Rampling has never been finer, and Cesar makes his character surprisingly proud and sympathetic.
July 06, 2006:
Critical Consensus: "Dead Man's Chest" Is Overstuffed; "Scanner" Shines Darkly
This week at the movies, we've got pirates back for more box office bounty ("Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest") and a journey to the center of the mind... More...
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