Sad and seedy holiday

Controversial subjects are what Laurent Cantet - highly regarded French director of Human Resources and Time Out - invariably deals with.

But he has never set his sights on anything as provoking as sexual tourism before. Heading South is also his first English-language film, which may be the reason why it's not nearly as expressive as his earlier work.

Culled from short stories by the Haitian-born writer Dany Laferrière, it follows three middle-aged women setting off for Port-au-Prince to taste the splendours of the local male talent.

They will feed their black prey and buy them presents for the duration in return for sex and, perhaps, even a certain fondness.

The queen bee among them is Ellen, played by Charlotte Rampling, who knows the score and is out to enjoy her holiday as thoroughly as she can. Her equally experienced friend is Sue (Louise Portal), a woman apparently not likely to make a fool of herself but who often edges towards doing exactly that.

Finally, there is the slightly mousy Brenda (Karen Young) from Savannah, Georgia, gingerly tasting forbidden flesh for the first time. It's set in the Seventies, towards the end of the horrendous "Baby Doc" Duvalier regime, and Cantet is at pains to point out that the dangers are not entirely one way. To hang around the holiday resorts of Haiti was a dangerous business for the men involved when the brutal Tonton Macoute were about.

But it's the women - frequently through their monologues - on whom the director concentrates. And they are no more pathetic than the male sex tourists who hang around places such as Havana to this day. The stronger they think they are, the more we are led to believe they might well come a cropper by falling for their handsome studs.

One of those studs is Legba (Ménothy Cesar), grabbed by Ellen who, despite herself, begins to fall for him. But tragedy stalks not her but him, and she leaves the resort feeling guiltier than she had expected.

Cesar and Rampling play very well, even if Cesar has little of Rampling's experience. But it is Karen Young who gives the most resonant performance as a weak woman hoping against hope for something more than just sex.

Whatever Heading South might lack, it is intriguing, showing another variant of the tourist consumer society battening on the Third World and doing it more harm than good.

Heading South (Vers Le Sud)
Cert: 15