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Heading South
Grade: A-

Laurent Cantet (Time Out) confirms that he is one of France’s top directors with this controversial and engrossing drama. Karen Young and Charlotte Rampling are terrific as sexually frustrated middle-aged women who vacation in Haiti in the late 1970s and pay a young Haitian man to get down and dirty with them. Viewing their beach resort as a private playground, they’re more or less oblivious to the poverty and political unrest that surrounds them. In a unique and effective stylistic maneuver, each major character reveals intimate details about themselves in a soliloquy.