Vers le Sud

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
2005

Vers le Sud | Heading South
Laurent Cantet
FRANCE/CANADA, 2005
French, Creole, English 105 minutes Colour/35mm
Production Company: Haut et Court/ Les Films Seville
Producer: Caroline Benjo, Carole Scotta, Simon Arnal, David Reckziegal, John Hamilton
Screenplay: Laurent Cantet, Robin Campillo, based on three short stories by Dany Laferriere Cinematographer: Pierre Milon
Editor: Robin Campillo
Production Designer: Franckie Diago
Sound: Claude Lahaye
Principal Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young, Louise Portal, Ménothy Cesar, Lys Ambroise
Production: Haut et Court

Perhaps the most exciting new figure in French cinema over the last decade has been Laurent Cantet. His provocative meditations on work and family, Ressources humaines and L’Emploi du temps, have had an enormous impact in intellectual circles throughout the world, as well as art-house audiences drawn to his emotionally fragile characters. He is that rarest of filmmakers: an artist completely immersed in ideas who nonetheless creates perfectly formed protagonists and authentic human drama.

Vers le Sud sees Cantet explore a different kind of dynamic, that between three women and their young lover. Sounds like more familiar French cinema, except in this case the three women are all North American sex tourists in eighties Haiti and the young man in question is a local Adonis: teenaged, gorgeous, wily—and accidentally mixed up in the cruel political world of “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s murderous regime.

The three women approach their vacation and part-time paramour in very different ways. Ellen (a chilling, haunting Charlotte Rampling) is every bit the Boston Brahman: bossy, haughty and affected. Brenda (Karen Young) is the Midwestern innocent, with an underlying vicious, masochistic streak. Earthy, joyous Sue (the wonderful Louise Portal from Les Invasions barbares) loves sex and play and tries to keep everyone in good spirits. The Sirkian tug-of-war between the women is epic and fraught with revenge and betrayal—but also tenderness.

Legba (Ménothy Cesar), the object of their affection, is a different matter. His allegiances unclear, he exists in a rarefied world—first bouncing from bed to bed, exuberantly proclaiming his freedom to do as he pleases, then terrified by the Tonton Macoutes. The women’s world is aptly mirrored in the dispassionate economic calculations of the resort’s young gigolos, trading stories and tips on their days off.

Cantet, holding true to Dany Laferriére’s short stories, has no interest in stigmatizing the women or Legba. He seeks instead to rethink the entire political economy of sex, class and prostitution—to imagine that, in this coldest example of globalized trade, an entirely new catalogue of emotions might reside.
—Noah Cowan