mamlukman I watched this for a very particular reason: last year I began researching conversions to Islam among Westerners. I found that 75% are women between 15-24. That seemed a bit odd to me...then I read a French report on Islamic extremists--most were, surprisingly, women converts! Then I began thinking about cults...the Manson Family...mostly women...Branch Davidians....mostly women....and so on. Then there is the phenomenon of the kidnapped girls, some of whom had the freedom to run away but refused to do so (Elizabeth Smart, et al.). While watching "Beatles: Eight Days a Week," which is mainly about the concerts the Beatles gave, it struck me that virtually the entire audience was young girls, all hysterical. Why???? Then, when thinking one day about Obama's mother (married a Kenyan student when she was very young, then married an Indonesian), I stumbled across this sub-culture of women who search out exotic locales for sex tourism. It's not a new phenomenon, but I'm not sure when it began-- "Heading South" is supposedly set in 1979. Maybe the sexual revolution of the 1960s unleashed something???This is a good movie in the sense that it at least tries to take a stab at explaining the women's motivations. A second movie, Dutch, 2016, is "Benzess as Usual," where the son of one of these vacation idylls returns to meet his father. In this case, it's Tunisia. But exactly the same thing is going on--older women using younger, poor men for sex. And, as hinted at in "Headed South" in this case the beach boy is taken to the Netherlands and then Switzerland (by different women!). He marries both, but of course it ends badly. A third movie in this genre is "Paradise Love." In this case, it's German women on the beaches of Mombasa. The location changes, the story is the same. There are also numerous youtube videos on this theme. And then of course there are books like "The White Masai" about a young (!) Swiss woman who marries a Masai--and not an educated, Westernized one, but a native from a village living in a mud hut. It's beyond bizarre.

pabmen The movie starts with a brave plot, but then the director does not know how to continue the story. Like most hypocrite viewers that cannot stand the idea of women having sex just for fun (like men do), on the second half of the movie he intends to be "politically correct" by giving a "happy ending" (to men) and a moral teaching (to woman), and to feel better with his own conscience, he finds a way to kill Mr. toy-boy (punishing him for being so "inmoral"). After this, and as opposed to the first half of the film, he shows woman as weak, sweet-hearted, and falling in love all the time, just like most naive men prefer to think about women. Also, to show himself sensible for the world we live in (another typical Hollywood cliché), he tries to condemn Haiti's political situation, but without risking to tell the actual real reasons why this country ended that way ("civilized" countries are mainly responsible). Good start, but a very disappointing ending ..

dave-sturm At the center of "Vers le sud" (Going South) is Legba, a hunky and lovable teenage Haitian lad who works as a sort of beach boy at a posh Haitian resort well away from the miseries of Haiti's urban areas in the 1970s.What Legba really does is provide "companionship" to middle aged American and European single women who want attention paid to them in an exotic locale with well-muscled and charming young black menwith French accents. It's kinda sex tourism, but for the gals.Legba (Methony Cesar) has long been the special summer companion to Ellen (Charlotte Rampling), about 55, a resort regular who is a Brit and a languages professor from Boston. She is worldly, sophisticated and imperious. She considers Legba basically hers for the summer.Into this scenario bumbles Brenda (Karen Young), a mouseburger divorcée from Savannah, Ga., who visited the hotel once three years earlier and had a sexual liaison with Legba. At age 45, she had her first orgasm with him. She is obsessed with him and, once she finds he's still working at the hotel, intends to claim him as hers.Brenda is clearly not emotionally stable, but Ellen also has issues.You may think this movie is going to be some kind of cat fight, but it has bigger fish to fry. For one thing, Legba, we see, has a back story no one else in the movie is aware of. The movie explores racism, colonialism, women's issues and class conflict, among other things. Hey, it's a French movie.If you like well-crafted, original dramas, you should check it out.

jdesando "Older women are best, because they always think they may be doing it for the last time." Ian Fleming Women in love . . . or lust . . . or longing. Heading South, set in Haiti in the '70's, is paradise for needy but wealthy middle-aged women. Young black men are willing to share their love for either dollars or gifts, while the women get something they can't buy elsewhere: respect and orgasms. It all seems much purer than men seeking young girls in Thailand, yet there is usually trouble in paradise.Three intertwining stories are told into camera of Ellen (Charlotte Rampling), who regularly comes here and has become attached to young Legba (Menothy Cesar); Brenda (Karen Young), who came once before with her husband and now threatens to steal Legba from Ellen; and Sue, an overweight, brassy Canadian. Nothing much happens but some petty jealousiesover Legba, until director Cantet goes outside the circle of thismodest resort where Papa Doc's dictatorship touches quietly on theirlives. In fact, the most powerful part of the film occurs in the opening scene, where a black mother tries to give away her daughter to a prosperous black man in order to avoid the child's being taken from her, as often happens to poor blacks in Haiti.Although a couple of the black men are filmed naked, and Brenda's breasts are revealed after a shower, there is little sex to spice up the film, regardless of the sexy premise. If Heading South had done more with the political and social unrest on the island, as a metaphor for the women's unrest at the resort, there would have been a much more substantial film. We are left with a not very interesting plot bolstered by very interesting and beautiful older actresses, Rampling and Young.