Heading South (2005)
Charlotte Rampling has made some really unusual films for an actress of her stature, and if these movies are lesser in some ways, they are lifted by her presence, which only seems to grow more interesting as she gets older. Heading South is daring in at least two ways. One is its setting and incidental structure: Haiti just before the age of AIDS. But more striking, Rampling plays one of several middle aged woman finding young black men (or boys) attractive, and willing, sexually, in an out of the way Caribbean beach.
This is edgy stuff for any time, even ours--older white women exploiting (or not, depending on you look at it) these available boys, all with a matter of fact, slightly giddy quality, laced with the usual jealousies and misunderstandings of love and sex anywhere. As if this wasn't enough for a probing plot, a more superficial series of events about the boy, and then the women, too. This second plot deflates the first concern, and sort of brings the movie down to something a little common, and though interesting, not on the order of the psychology and social dangers of the other aspects.
Which is to say, there are enough really strange, disturbing, well made aspects here to make the movie stick with you long after watching it. And that's enough for starters. Give it a chance.
Charlotte Rampling has made some really unusual films for an actress of her stature, and if these movies are lesser in some ways, they are lifted by her presence, which only seems to grow more interesting as she gets older. Heading South is daring in at least two ways. One is its setting and incidental structure: Haiti just before the age of AIDS. But more striking, Rampling plays one of several middle aged woman finding young black men (or boys) attractive, and willing, sexually, in an out of the way Caribbean beach.
This is edgy stuff for any time, even ours--older white women exploiting (or not, depending on you look at it) these available boys, all with a matter of fact, slightly giddy quality, laced with the usual jealousies and misunderstandings of love and sex anywhere. As if this wasn't enough for a probing plot, a more superficial series of events about the boy, and then the women, too. This second plot deflates the first concern, and sort of brings the movie down to something a little common, and though interesting, not on the order of the psychology and social dangers of the other aspects.
Which is to say, there are enough really strange, disturbing, well made aspects here to make the movie stick with you long after watching it. And that's enough for starters. Give it a chance.