Vers le sud

I just saw the US premier at the American Museum of Moving Image last night [10/20/05]. Cantet and co. interweave three short stories by Haitian writer Dany Laferriere (not yet translated into English from French as of 10/21/05). Though the scope and themes of the stories differ considerably, "Vers Le Sud" is as shattering and masterful as Cantet's previous feature, "Time Out," and should similarly be talked about for years to come.

Cantet and cinematographer Pierre Milon have shot many incredibly complex emotional exchanges without relying on any obvious dialogue. Their confidence that it would cut together and 'play' so well on screen must be partially due to Cantet's having a co-writer who is also the editor (Robin Campillo). The story is told through subtle reactions, gestures and intonations ala "Time Out," but Vers's dialogue seems both more plentiful and more emotionally transparent.

"Vers" also contains more characters, incidents, and a more complex thematic scope than "Time Out." Where "Time" explored a single character's relation to work, pride, and masculinity, "Vers" explores 3 middle-aged white women's sexual and romantic desire for a teenage Haitian, black male prostitute. Cantet explores the central situation's inherent political, racial, sexual, emotional and age-related issues-- often in the same scene.

In doing so, Cantet / LaFerriere necessarily broach a number of taboo subjects: middle age women being openly sexual on screen, and being sexual with teenagers; women paying male prostitutes; white women with black men; women as one discarded, ignored caste, hooking up with another discarded, ignored caste (3rd world men of color); women giving sexual desire the same primacy in their lives as men traditionally have; the world's richest bedding the world's poorest; the willful blindness of the rich towards the suffering of the poor or foreign; American economic imperialism; the predatory nature of consumerist tourism.

In exploring these issues, Vers provokes a sense of moral/political outrage on par with the very angry, very moving "The Constant Gardener." The tourist women of "Vers" turn a willfully blind eye to the dire political / economic situation that drives vulnerable young men into their beds. To watch these women do this is infuriating; their desire becomes repellent, exploitative.

But at the same moment, we are also made to feel how touchingly human these women's needs are-- for love (Brenda), sex (Ellen) and affection (Sue). We experience their loneliness as achingly poignant, even tragic. During the Q&A, one middle-aged woman in the audience referred to the film as pro-feminist in its emotional honesty, and I agree.

The women's relations with their gigolos appear to be emotional two-way streets, albeit with a much wider lane for the Northerners. The women and young men do share affection; and it isn't hard to understand how the women could fool themselves into believing in the possibility of real love blossoming in these tropical, permissive environs.

But when disagreement or insecurity arises with the gigolos, the women's economic superiority gives them the final word. That the same characters in the same scene can simultaneously evoke nausea and tenderness is a testament to the skills of all involved.

The film feels very French in its tasteful restraint -- the sex is never shown -- and in the way it explores its politically charged themes largely through male/female relationships. The film therefore plays entirely as human drama, and never feels sensationalistic, didactic, or titillating.

I had a few *minor* quibbles with this great film. The performances of actors playing Ellen, Albert and Legba were pitch-perfect. But there were moments in Brenda and Sue's scenes when I felt them 'Acting'-- whether this is attributable to lapses in writing, acting, directing or editing is impossible to know. I enjoyed the monologues, delivered into the camera, but I thought they would have felt less artificial if another character had been written into the rooms with them, for the character to address. I also felt it lasted 1 or 2 scenes longer than necessary in the end.

Some have argued that the film should included more of Legba's perspective, but I disagree. Given the sensitivity of the film as a whole, the nationality of the original short story writer (Haitian), and in conveying Legba's emotions in particular, I'm sure that the storytellers made a conscious decision not to include more of Legba's perspective, and the film's structure is the stronger for it.

In fact, the film could only have been created by a group of artists working at the top of their form. Like "Time Out," there will not be a more complex film than Vers Le Sud this year (and I include my other art-house favorites 2046, Head-On, Last Days, Broken Flowers, Brown Bunny, The New World, and yes, Kung Fu Hustle). Here's hoping Vers gets a proper distribution.

A great topic and script headline 'Heading South' a movie about three women who vacation in Haiti in the 1970's for the sun and surf, but mainly to bed any black men they can find (who are available for the price). I mean, THAT'S fabulous! Who would've thought of that? All of them though, seem to have sights on one man, Legba. The competition for this man, soon becomes to the point that Legba tries to get out of his job as stud-for-hire, to somewhat catastrophic results. The three women, headed by the always excellent Charlotte Rampling, are quite great here, but the star here is the actor playing Legba, Menothy Cesar. The story essentially revolves around him, and he does a great job with actually a really demanding role.

One of those films that bit off more than it could chew. The subject could hardly be more challenging and raises multiple, complex issues : female sexuality, male prostitution, North- South relations. But the treatment somehow fails to tackle any of them convincingly. The film is surprisingly claustrophobic, most of it taking place in a "huit clos" atmosphere with mostly close-up and medium shots - this is presumably the director's choice, but the effect, as far as I was concerned, was to make it feel like one of those rather unsuccessful screen versions of stage plays. Much of the dialogue sounded thin and false to my ear. One good point - Karen Young's sensitive portrayal of Brenda. Charlotte Rampling did almost too well what was expected of her and the resultant performance is perhaps a trifle predictable.

Laurent Cantet's Heading South/Vers le sud begins in the Port au Prince airport. A Haitian woman, with the greatest sweetness and dignity, implores a man she's never met, a resort hotel employee, to take away her teenage daughter with him so that the girl will be safe. The lady explains that her husband had a respectable position but suddenly was disappeared by the Papa Doc regime; now she is penniless. The man refuses to take the girl. Instead he meets a sad-faced, sallow white woman named Brenda (Karen Young) and takes her to the hotel.

Soon Brenda is on the beach where young blacks – the favorite, Legba (Ménothy Cesar), lithe and sweet; the older Neptune (Wilfred Paul); little Eddy (Jackenson Pierre Olmo Diaz) and others – accompany women in their forties and fifties, of whom we observe Sue (Louise Portal), a French Canadian, and Ellen (Charlotte Rampling) – who almost seems to be in charge.

There is something voyeuristic about the first third of this movie. The way the boys fawn on the women – and the women lap it up -- is more mutually exploitive, racist, political, more starkly rich/poor, young/old – even more starkly hedonistic than we're accustomed to seeing on the screen – so overtly shocking that even before the film has gone into release American critics have taken offense at it. Perhaps most shocking of all, we know this is the poorest and scariest country in the hemisphere at one of the worst times (the Seventies, yet these people are having immense fun, living an idyll.

Cantet is as concerned with the whole situation as he is with the few events that unfold; as concerned with the whole phenomenon of "heading south" as with Brenda's hopeless, perhaps embarrassing, infatuation with Legba, or Ellen's subsequent collapse, the trouble that befalls Legba – these dispersals and dispositions of the action. But the situation is such that something must happen. It's a situation that's satisfying to the participants but fraught with danger.

Human Resource/Resources humaines (1999), Cantet's second film and the first one shown in the US, shows a small factory where a young man who's just come in as part of management joins a strike to support his worker father – even though his father rejects the strike and resents this stand. The film sees labor conflicts in a very personal way, and identification (labor/management, socialist/communist) as flexible. Time Out/L'Emploi du temps (2001), the director's third outing, is also about work, identity, and masks. A man loses his job but out of shame invents a nonexistent one and for months pretends to his family that he's traveling with important new responsibilities, international in nature, when in fact he's just driving around vast stretches of country. Has he lost his job, his identity, or his sanity? A bit of each, because they're intertwined.

Heading South is also about work and masks and ambiguous roles. The white women's Haitian lovers aren't simply sex workers or "gigolos." At least one, the older Neptune, works as a fisherman. Free lancers, they aren't "paid" in any organized way, just slipped some money or given presents. In return the Haitians satisfy the women in ways that can hardly be quantified. Three years ago Brenda seduced Legba at fifteen, after her late husband had been feeding him meals, and she had her first orgasm with the boy, at the age of 45. (She, Ellen, and Sue address the camera directly to describe their situation. Legba, who says it's sexier to talk little and preserve his mystery, never does.) The film's based on three short stories by Haitian writer Dany Lafferière, and the action feels like an updated Somerset Maugham; this is colonialism, and it's people who take foolish risks and get burned.

I don't think the white women are unaware of the awful regime; they just look the other way. Several times when the camera's alone with Legba (that is, away from the white women), we see signs of the corruption, power, and danger close at hand and we realize these can crush Legba – even for almost no reason. When he's taken for a ride in a limo with dark windows we know he's in mortal danger.

There's a seeming contrast between the heart-on-her-sleeve, vulnerable Brenda, from the American South, and cool, sophisticated Ellen, a Brit from Boston who's fluent in French. Ellen cynically says the women all want the same thing – a good time – but in the end it's Brenda who goes on pursuing pleasure and Ellen who returns to the North, her heart and spirit broken. Brenda replaces Ellen; and little Eddy, who already wants to pair off with white women, in time will replace Legba.

Heading South isn't as clearly schematic as Human Resources or as intriguingly strange as Time Out, but brings up a wider and more troubling range of issues. Its up-front look at sexual tourism and the presence of the reborn and quietly magnificent Charlotte Rampling will insure that this third of Laurent Cantet's movies to be distributed in the US will lead to more recognition by the American audience.

Local reactions show Cantet has unintentionally touched American nerves. He's simply cooler about race, class and gender; he's not unaware of anything, but he lets us draw our own conclusions, and he enjoys provocations and ambiguities. He continues to be an interesting filmmaker who has a special skill at showing how public and private issues intersect, and Vers le sud looks as if it will win him both more friends and more enemies. By heading South, he's put himself more on the map.

Laurent Cantet's new film reminds me a little of those Graham Greene novels about well-meaning Westerners who get mixed up in disastrous situations in third-world countries; think of The Quiet American, Our Man In Havana, or The Comedians, set in Haiti also. For the confused capitalist white men, Cantet substitutes middle-aged randy white women soaking up the sun and Tequila Sunrises outside Port-au-Prince. Thankfully there is very little political theory being spouted by the main characters, although Ellen cannot resist some harsh comments directed at Brenda late in the film.

Charlotte Rampling as Ellen has relatively few scenes, but leaves a great impression as a college professor whose value in the sexual marketplace shoots up when she leaves Boston for the tropics. She doesn't seem very bitter about this, just accepts it as part of the aging process. Karen Young is new to me, most of her work has been done for TV. Her part is different, more spiritual, less grounded in the realities of here and now. She has less inner resources to cope with the chaos and violence of Haiti. Louise Portal is one of my favorite Quebec actresses, known to foreign viewers through Denis Arcand's very funny Decline of The American Empire. Here she plays a woman who is simpler than Ellen or Brenda, happier and less conflicted about growing old.

Cantet's direction of actors and description of the poverty and desperation, as well as the beauty of the Haitian locales is very effective. I wondered what he was going to do after Time Out, that wintry cry of despair from the French Alps, and he hasn't disappointed me.