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Vers le Sud | Heading South

A brittle indictment of Anglo naïveté and self-deception

By A.S. HAMRAH | August 2, 2006

2.5 Stars

Laurent Cantet’s 2001 L’emploi du temps|Time Out is one of the best films of the decade. Vers le Sud is not. Set in the 1980s, it follows three white women on vacation in Haiti, where they go to make it with younger black men. After an ominous prologue set in an airport, the film veers into a strange country where the tortured intrigue of a Graham Greene novel meets the heavy breathing of a Tennessee Williams play. Monologues delivered to the camera by Charlotte Rampling as a Wellesley professor and Karen Young as a Georgia divorcée don’t help. Cantet means well, but his film unravels as the two women form a tense triangle with their shared Haitian lover, Legba (Ménothy César). They trade accusations (“Legba belongs to everyone!” “You know nothing about Legba!”); the film becomes a brittle indictment of Anglo naïveté and self-deception. Yet as close to camp as it is, Vers le Sud still manages to provoke.

On the Web
Vers le Sud:http://www.hautetcourt.com/fiche.php?pkfilms=105

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ARTICLES BY A.S. HAMRAH

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