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.
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07/04/06
Heading South (2006)
69
%
Tomatometer
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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]
Reviews for Heading South
Top CriticThe film is rich, cultured and slightly tiresome.
07/08/06
Heading South is a beautifully shot, superbly acted, thought-provoking and ultimately moving film with superb performances from all concerned.
07/06/06
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.
07/06/06
Top CriticAs a glimpse into a curious subculture this provokes interest, but in dramatic and political terms it’s a missed opportunity.
07/07/06
Top CriticIt also boasts another rich performance by Charlotte Rampling who continues to grow more interesting as an actress.
03/26/08
Cantet's pictures are screwball comedies played straight
09/24/05
While its main characters are admirably humanized, this is nevertheless a movie about economic exploitation. It's a very sexual work, but it is far more political at its core.
07/21/06
Three excellent performances from the leading ladies, though at times Cantet's leisurely pace is perhaps a bit too holiday-like.
01/10/06
While the film's focus is hazy and the dialogue sometimes clunky, it's still worth seeing . . . a melancholy reminder of the myopia in which privileged, self-absorbed whites can wrap themselves while travelling abroad.
07/06/06
It's a measured, stately film, and that makes the women's behavior -- 'It's incredible how racist they can be,' says Young, ignorant of her own racism -- even more shocking.
09/07/06
A trio of middle-aged white women from different backgrounds relish the tropical pleasures of '70s era Haiti, which includes local teenage gigolos, in writer/director Laurent Cantet's problematic filmic adaptation of three short stories by Dany Laferriere
04/23/09
The regal Rampling has never been finer, and Cesar makes his character surprisingly proud and sympathetic.
09/07/06
In a humid story that doesn't dip too far into voyeurism, and gives us a deep sense of Haiti as a volcano where visitors picnic on the slope, [Young] is a flood of complicated feelings.
08/25/06
Erotic drama that probes lust, a police state and exploitation in the idyllic sunny climes of Haiti.
04/18/08
an intense experience
01/28/07
Director/co-writer Laurent Cantet's Heading South/Vers le sud is uniquely serious and for once from the girls' side of things.
07/01/06
The film triumphs as a prism for intimate, personal truths.
03/01/07
Heading South is an absorbing extension of Cantet’s abiding obsession with the seeding of political inequality in intimate relations.
07/20/06
Departing from his male-driven films, Cantet zeroes in on three sexually frustrated women (ab)using Haitian boys, probing how the personal and the political interface and clash in issues of physical desire and social intimacy.
07/23/06
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