Heading South (2005/French)
Picture: C+ Sound: B- Extras: D Film: C+
I just
love how art films try to hide sex, than have trouble dealing with it when it
comes out in the open. With the
inclusion of Charlotte Rampling as the lead, Laurent Cantet’s Heading South (2005) is a tale about
older white European women finding younger black men at the equator and
sleeping around with them. Sure, we get
the self-reflections of the characters, the women talking (sometimes in unintentionally
funny terms) their sexual experiences in ways that do not quite work in the
Cantet/Robin Campillo screenplay (from a trio of Dany Laferriére stories, one
from each white woman) and semi-nude and sexually suggestive scenes that talk a
line between narrative and titillation.
In one
respect, we’ve seen this before in the Angela Bassett hit How Stella Got Her Groove Back, but the cross-generational aspect
has the added issue of inner-racial happenings, which the film deals with to
some extent. However, not with the depth
of a Spike Lee film, so alternate titles for this include How Eurowomen Got Back On Their Backs or Jungle Fever Mania!
This is
not to oversimplify, but another good performance from Rampling and the young
male actors and all the posturing in the world cannot cover up what is really
going on here and watching the film spend 103 minutes denying this is almost
campy.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is softer than expected, despite how
nicely cinematographer Pierre Milon shot the outdoors and actors. However, it is watchable despite its detail
limits. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix has
just enough music and surround ambiance to make it better than dialogue-based
dullness. There are no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
