Release CalendarDVD & Blu-ray ReleasesTop 250 MoviesMost Popular MoviesBrowse Movies by GenreTop Box OfficeShowtimes & TicketsIn TheatersComing SoonMovie NewsIndia Movie Spotlight
    What's on TV & StreamingTop 250 TV ShowsMost Popular TV ShowsBrowse TV Shows by GenreTV NewsIndia TV Spotlight
    What to WatchLatest TrailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsBest Picture WinnersBest Picture WinnersEmmysLGBTQ+ Pride MonthSTARmeter AwardsSan Diego Comic-ConNew York Comic-ConSundance Film FestivalToronto Int'l Film FestivalAwards CentralFestival CentralAll Events
    Born TodayMost Popular CelebsMost Popular CelebsCelebrity News
    Help CenterContributor ZonePolls
For Industry Professionals
  • All
  • Titles
  • TV Episodes
  • Celebs
  • Companies
  • Keywords
  • Advanced Search
Watchlist
Sign In
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
IMDbPro

Heading South

Original title: Vers le sud
  • 20052005
  • UnratedUnrated
  • 1h 48m
IMDb RATING
6.3/10
2.8K
YOUR RATING
Charlotte Rampling, Louise Portal, and Karen Young in Heading South (2005)
  • Drama
Three female tourists have their eyes opened while visiting the poverty-stricken and dangerous world of 1980s Haiti.Three female tourists have their eyes opened while visiting the poverty-stricken and dangerous world of 1980s Haiti.Three female tourists have their eyes opened while visiting the poverty-stricken and dangerous world of 1980s Haiti.
IMDb RATING
6.3/10
2.8K
YOUR RATING
  • Director
    • Laurent Cantet
  • Writers
    • Laurent Cantet(scenario)
    • Robin Campillo(scenario)
    • Dany Laferrière(based on three stories from the book "La Chair du Maître" by)
  • Stars
    • Charlotte Rampling
    • Karen Young
    • Louise Portal
Top credits
  • Director
    • Laurent Cantet
  • Writers
    • Laurent Cantet(scenario)
    • Robin Campillo(scenario)
    • Dany Laferrière(based on three stories from the book "La Chair du Maître" by)
  • Stars
    • Charlotte Rampling
    • Karen Young
    • Louise Portal
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 35User reviews
    • 90Critic reviews
    • 73Metascore
  • See production, box office & company info
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 3 wins & 1 nomination

    Photos45

    Charlotte Rampling at an event for Heading South (2005)
    Charlotte Rampling at an event for Heading South (2005)
    Charlotte Rampling at an event for Heading South (2005)
    Karen Young at an event for Heading South (2005)
    Karen Young at an event for Heading South (2005)
    Karen Young at an event for Heading South (2005)
    Karen Young at an event for Heading South (2005)
    Laurent Cantet and Karen Young at an event for Heading South (2005)
    Charlotte Rampling, Louise Portal, and Karen Young at an event for Heading South (2005)
    Charlotte Rampling, Laurent Cantet, Louise Portal, and Karen Young at an event for Heading South (2005)
    Louise Portal at an event for Heading South (2005)
    Louise Portal at an event for Heading South (2005)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Charlotte Rampling
    Charlotte Rampling
    • Ellenas Ellen
    Karen Young
    Karen Young
    • Brendaas Brenda
    Louise Portal
    Louise Portal
    • Sueas Sue
    Ménothy Cesar
    • Legbaas Legba
    Lys Ambroise
    • Albertas Albert
    Jackenson Pierre Olmo Diaz
    • Eddyas Eddy
    Wilfried Paul
    • Neptuneas Neptune
    Anotte Saint Ford
    • Limousine Girlas Limousine Girl
    Marie-Laurence Hérard
    • Airport Womanas Airport Woman
    Michelet Cassis
    • Charlieas Charlie
    Pierre-Jean Robert
    • Chicoas Chico
    Jean Delinze Salomon
    • Jérémyas Jérémy
    Kettline Amy
    • Deniseas Denise
    Daphné Destin
    • Lossitaas Lossita
    Guiteau Nestant
    • Frankas Frank
    Violette Vincent
    • Legba's Motheras Legba's Mother
    Ti Koka
    • Orchestra Memberas Orchestra Member
    Wanga Negès
    • Orchestra Memberas Orchestra Member
    • Director
      • Laurent Cantet
    • Writers
      • Laurent Cantet(scenario)
      • Robin Campillo(scenario)
      • Dany Laferrière(based on three stories from the book "La Chair du Maître" by)
    • All cast & crew
    • See more cast details at IMDbPro

    More like this

    Paradise: Love
    7.0
    Paradise: Love
    Return to Ithaca
    6.5
    Return to Ithaca
    Time Out
    7.3
    Time Out
    Calendar
    6.8
    Calendar
    Human Resources
    7.3
    Human Resources
    Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang
    6.1
    Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang
    The Workshop
    6.5
    The Workshop
    Les sanguinaires
    6.3
    Les sanguinaires
    Lilya 4-Ever
    7.8
    Lilya 4-Ever
    The Class
    7.5
    The Class
    Arthur Rambo
    6.3
    Arthur Rambo
    The Wife
    6.8
    The Wife

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Part of the film was to be shot in Haiti but only one week's filming took place because political events prevented the crew from staying longer. The rest of the film was shot in the Dominican Republic, in neighboring Santo Domingo.
    • Goofs
      When Brenda is desperately looking for Legba and she wanders around the village at night, one of the guys she crosses by is wearing a Larry Johnson NBA New York Knicks basketball jacket with number 2. Larry Johnson played for the Knicks in the mid '90s.
    • Quotes

      [recalling her first time with Legba]

      Brenda: We were both lying in our bathing suits on a big rock, basking in the sun. His body fascinated me. Long, lithe, muscular, his skin glistened. I couldn't take my eyes off him. And the later it got, the more I was losing my mind. He was, he was lying there beside me, his eyes were shut. I remember every move I made, as if it was yesterday. I edged my hand over and placed it on his chest. Legba opened his eyes and immediately closed them again. That encouraged me and I, I moved my hand down his body. Such soft, young skin. He was motionless. And I slid two fingers into his bathing suit and touched his cock. Almost immediately, it started getting hard, growing in the palm of my hand, until it just popped out. His arms were beside his body. He breathed faintly, but, but very regularly. I looked around to see that no one was coming and I threw myself on him. I literally threw myself on him. It, it was so violent, I couldn't help but scream. I, I think I never stopped screaming. It was my first orgasm. I was 45.

    • Connections
      Edited into La dérive douce d'un enfant de Petit-Goâve (2009)
    • Soundtracks
      Sobo
      Traditional

      Performed by Ti Koka et Wanga Negès

    User reviews35

    Review
    Top review
    8/10
    Another thought-provoker from Cantet
    Laurent Cantet's Heading South/Vers le sud begins in the Port au Prince airport. A Haitian woman, with the greatest sweetness and dignity, implores a man she's never met, a resort hotel employee, to take away her teenage daughter with him so that the girl will be safe. The lady explains that her husband had a respectable position but suddenly was disappeared by the Papa Doc regime; now she is penniless. The man refuses to take the girl. Instead he meets a sad-faced, sallow white woman named Brenda (Karen Young) and takes her to the hotel.

    Soon Brenda is on the beach where young blacks – the favorite, Legba (Ménothy Cesar), lithe and sweet; the older Neptune (Wilfred Paul); little Eddy (Jackenson Pierre Olmo Diaz) and others – accompany women in their forties and fifties, of whom we observe Sue (Louise Portal), a French Canadian, and Ellen (Charlotte Rampling) – who almost seems to be in charge.

    There is something voyeuristic about the first third of this movie. The way the boys fawn on the women – and the women lap it up -- is more mutually exploitive, racist, political, more starkly rich/poor, young/old – even more starkly hedonistic than we're accustomed to seeing on the screen – so overtly shocking that even before the film has gone into release American critics have taken offense at it. Perhaps most shocking of all, we know this is the poorest and scariest country in the hemisphere at one of the worst times (the Seventies, yet these people are having immense fun, living an idyll.

    Cantet is as concerned with the whole situation as he is with the few events that unfold; as concerned with the whole phenomenon of "heading south" as with Brenda's hopeless, perhaps embarrassing, infatuation with Legba, or Ellen's subsequent collapse, the trouble that befalls Legba – these dispersals and dispositions of the action. But the situation is such that something must happen. It's a situation that's satisfying to the participants but fraught with danger.

    Human Resource/Resources humaines (1999), Cantet's second film and the first one shown in the US, shows a small factory where a young man who's just come in as part of management joins a strike to support his worker father – even though his father rejects the strike and resents this stand. The film sees labor conflicts in a very personal way, and identification (labor/management, socialist/communist) as flexible. Time Out/L'Emploi du temps (2001), the director's third outing, is also about work, identity, and masks. A man loses his job but out of shame invents a nonexistent one and for months pretends to his family that he's traveling with important new responsibilities, international in nature, when in fact he's just driving around vast stretches of country. Has he lost his job, his identity, or his sanity? A bit of each, because they're intertwined.

    Heading South is also about work and masks and ambiguous roles. The white women's Haitian lovers aren't simply sex workers or "gigolos." At least one, the older Neptune, works as a fisherman. Free lancers, they aren't "paid" in any organized way, just slipped some money or given presents. In return the Haitians satisfy the women in ways that can hardly be quantified. Three years ago Brenda seduced Legba at fifteen, after her late husband had been feeding him meals, and she had her first orgasm with the boy, at the age of 45. (She, Ellen, and Sue address the camera directly to describe their situation. Legba, who says it's sexier to talk little and preserve his mystery, never does.) The film's based on three short stories by Haitian writer Dany Lafferière, and the action feels like an updated Somerset Maugham; this is colonialism, and it's people who take foolish risks and get burned.

    I don't think the white women are unaware of the awful regime; they just look the other way. Several times when the camera's alone with Legba (that is, away from the white women), we see signs of the corruption, power, and danger close at hand and we realize these can crush Legba – even for almost no reason. When he's taken for a ride in a limo with dark windows we know he's in mortal danger.

    There's a seeming contrast between the heart-on-her-sleeve, vulnerable Brenda, from the American South, and cool, sophisticated Ellen, a Brit from Boston who's fluent in French. Ellen cynically says the women all want the same thing – a good time – but in the end it's Brenda who goes on pursuing pleasure and Ellen who returns to the North, her heart and spirit broken. Brenda replaces Ellen; and little Eddy, who already wants to pair off with white women, in time will replace Legba.

    Heading South isn't as clearly schematic as Human Resources or as intriguingly strange as Time Out, but brings up a wider and more troubling range of issues. Its up-front look at sexual tourism and the presence of the reborn and quietly magnificent Charlotte Rampling will insure that this third of Laurent Cantet's movies to be distributed in the US will lead to more recognition by the American audience.

    Local reactions show Cantet has unintentionally touched American nerves. He's simply cooler about race, class and gender; he's not unaware of anything, but he lets us draw our own conclusions, and he enjoys provocations and ambiguities. He continues to be an interesting filmmaker who has a special skill at showing how public and private issues intersect, and Vers le sud looks as if it will win him both more friends and more enemies. By heading South, he's put himself more on the map.
    helpful•41
    8
    • Chris Knipp
    • May 3, 2006

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • January 25, 2006 (France)
    • Countries of origin
      • France
      • Canada
      • Belgium
    • Languages
      • French
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Bienvenidas al paraíso
    • Filming locations
      • Playa Bonita, Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
    • Production companies
      • Haut et Court
      • Les Films Seville
      • France 3 Cinéma
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $898,468
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $1,200
      • Feb 5, 2006
    • Gross worldwide
      • $3,294,052
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 48 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
      • DTS
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

    Related news

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    Charlotte Rampling, Louise Portal, and Karen Young in Heading South (2005)
    Top Gap
    By what name was Heading South (2005) officially released in Canada in English?
    Answer
    • See more gaps
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    View list
    List
    Editors' Picks: What to Watch Now on Netflix
    See the full list
    View image
    Photos
    Hollywood Romances: Our Favorite Couples
    See the full list

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb App
    • Get the IMDb App
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • IMDb Developer
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Interest-Based Ads
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2022 by IMDb.com, Inc.