Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

58 (Untitled)
96 35 Shots of Rum
56 Adam
72 Adela
39 Adventures of Power
78 Afghan Star
61 After the Storm
66 Afterschool
xx All the Best
58 American Casino
72 Amreeka
48 Antichrist
73 Araya
62 Art & Copy
55 As Seen Through These Eyes
76 Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86 Beaches of Agnes, The
13 Beautiful Life, A
70 Beeswax
35 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
71 Big Fan
66 Black Dynamite
51 Blind Date
xx Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly
76 Bliss
35 Blue Tooth Virgin, The
26 Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
57 Boys Are Back, The
45 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81 Bright Star
70 Bronson
45 Burning Plain, The
xx Carriers
55 Casi Divas
57 Chelsea on the Rocks
62 Cloud 9
65 Coco Before Chanel
69 Cold Souls
59 Collapse
44 Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha
82 Cove, The
75 Crude
82 Damned United, The
67 Departures
xx Dil Bole Hadippa
71 Disgrace
xx Do Knot Disturb
70 Earth Days
24 Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat
85 Education, An
55 Endgame
xx Eulogy for a Vampire
xx Everyone Else
xx Fatal Promises
56 Fifty Dead Men Walking
62 Five Minutes of Heaven
74 Flame & Citron
49 Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80 Food, Inc.
28 Free Style
xx From Mexico with Love
50 Fuel
25 Gentlemen Broncos
50 Give Me Your Hand
58 Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
72 Good Hair
89 Goodbye Solo
52 Grace
66 Harmony and Me
81 Headless Woman, The
xx Heretics, The
63 Horse Boy, The
73 House of the Devil, The
xx How to Seduce Difficult Women
74 Humpday
94 Hurt Locker, The
29 I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
16 If One Thing Matters: A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
75 In Search of Beethoven
83 In the Loop
61 Intimate Enemies
42 Irene in Time
70 It Might Get Loud
46 Killing Kasztner
19 Labor Day
xx Laila's Birthday
41 Little Ashes
41 Little Traitor, The
66 Liverpool
34 Looking for Palladin
80 Lorna's Silence
83 Maid, The
xx Ministers, The
59 More Than a Game
67 Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
34 Motherhood
62 My One and Only
xx Mystery Team
48 New York, I Love You
73 Night and Day
66 No Impact Man
47 Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
34 Other Man, The
xx Painter Sam Francis, The
54 Paper Heart
xx Paradise
68 Paranormal Activity
68 Paris
44 Peter and Vandy
35 Play the Game
77 Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
xx Pretty Ugly People
65 Providence Effect, The
76 Rembrandt's J'accuse
69 September Issue, The
79 Serious Man, A
40 Shrink
61 Skin
77 Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, A
xx Skiptracers
46 Splinterheads
39 St. Trinian's
89 Still Walking
50 Stoning of Soraya M., The
55 Storm
65 Tetro
70 That Evening Sun
72 Thirst
xx Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D (re-release)
61 Trucker
xx Turning Green
83 U2 3D
66 Unmade Beds
66 Unmistaken Child
70 Visual Acoustics
55 Walt & El Grupo
67 Way We Get By, The
69 We Live in Public
64 Wedding Song, The
64 Where is Where?
xx White on Rice
74 Woman in Berlin, A
69 World's Greatest Dad
70 Yes Men Fix the World
69 Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
xx You, the Living

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Heading South

EMAILPRINTCelluloid Dreams

Heading South reviews
73
7.0 User Score:

Generally favorable reviews

Based on 26 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 13 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama  |  Foreign

Written by: Robin Campillo
Laurent Cantet
Dany Laferrière (novel La Chair du Maître and short stories)

Directed by: Laurent Cantet

Release Date:
Theatrical: July 7, 2006
DVD: February 6, 2007

Running Time: 107 minutes, Color

Origin: France / Canada

Summary

RATING: Not Rated

Starring Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young, Louise Portal, Ménothy Cesar, Lys Ambroise, Jackenson Pierre Olmo Diaz, Wilfried Paul, and Anotte Saint Ford

On the sun drenched island of Haiti in the '70s, foreigners idle away their vacations in the palm-fringed paradise of the beach hotels. Brenda (Young), Ellen (Rampling) and Sue (Portal), three North American women, converge on the island looking for flirtation, relaxation and respite from their colorless jobs and marriages. They find what they are looking for in Legba (Cesar), an enigmatic local Adonis whose beauty and passion has them enthralled. It is this passion that will lead them away from the gilded cage of tourism and will open their eyes to the poverty stricken and dangerous world of Haiti. (Celluloid Dreams)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Film Threat Phil Hall

Cantet weaves a dark, disturbing story of hedonism, casual racism and the lethal consequences of self-indulgence in his superb drama Heading South.

Read Full Review >
100

The New York Times Stephen Holden

A beautifully written, seamlessly directed film with award-worthy performances by Ms. Rampling and Ms. Young.

Read Full Review >
100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Heading South is a hydra-headed love story, as dangerous as it is heated and complex.

Read Full Review >
91

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

A pleasurably unsettling, sunbaked tale of sex and politics set in late-1970s Haiti.

Read Full Review >
88

TV Guide Ken Fox

Director Laurent Cantet's fourth feature abandons the contentious French workplaces of "Human Resources" and "Time Out" for sunnier climes, but this Haitian idyll is an equally excoriating look at labor and exploitation.

Read Full Review >
88

New York Post Kyle Smith

The movie itself is a powerful cocktail of not just sex and love but race, poverty, colonialism and jealousy.

Read Full Review >
88

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Boasts another formidable and fine-tuned performance from the great Charlotte Rampling.

Read Full Review >
80

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Laurent Cantet's fascinating, troubling drama has many meanings.

80

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Heading South is a seemingly straightforward and simple picture that's really defiantly complex, sexually, politically and emotionally.

Read Full Review >
80

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

In its way, the film is a piercing indictment, though it makes its point without much screaming, hectoring or preening. It's quietly terrific.

Read Full Review >
75

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The film offers something unusual, a tragic spectacle of normal, recognizable and utterly sympathetic people condemning themselves.

Read Full Review >
75

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Heading South is strong in bursts, but the bursts are too diffuse for its best moments to last.

Read Full Review >
75

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Evocative and disturbing.

Read Full Review >
75

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The racial and sexual politics of Heading South may trouble some audiences; Cantet is definitely not a moralist in the usual sense.

Read Full Review >
70

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

If only Cantet and Robin Campillo (who based their screenplay on stories by Dany Lafèrriere) had balanced the sexual and political elements more acutely, the result could have been searing.

Read Full Review >
70

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

An absorbing extension of Cantet's abiding obsession with the seeding of political inequality in intimate relations.

Read Full Review >
70

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The film tackles more than it can master, but it's never less than fascinating, and all three leads are exceptional.

Read Full Review >
70

Village Voice J. Hoberman

An intelligent movie, not so much salacious as affecting but ultimately less analytical than overwrought, Heading South makes its points in the first 20 minutes.

Read Full Review >
67

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Provocative and prodding, but apart from its queen bee Ellen (the marvelous Rampling), the characters are representational types instead of fleshed-out human beings.

Read Full Review >
63

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Cantet does something that educated, upscale audiences may find exasperating in the extreme: He takes a tinderbox of racial and sexual exploitation, pours gasoline all over it, and refuses to light the match.

Read Full Review >
60

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Lonely, bitter, insecure and clearly unstable, the women are meant to level the emotional playing field and add depth to what is, at heart, a story about the exploitation of poor nations by rich and powerful ones. But they wind up being too bitter and unstable to elicit much sympathy.

Read Full Review >
60

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

Cantet keeps a lid on a story that he could have easily exploited, but he makes his points about beauty, fulfillment, self-indulgence and delusion with a measured hand.

Read Full Review >
60

Variety Jay Weissberg

Cantet's anticipated follow-up to "Time Out" supplants that pic's important issues with unexamined attitudes toward sex and the tropics.

Read Full Review >
58

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Heading South's gender politics keep the movie from being too simple, since these women's self-indulgence can be read as a kind of unfettered (and even laudable) feminism, instead of just unintentional racism.

Read Full Review >
50

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Among the creepiest adult monologues you'll hear in a regular theater this year comes from Karen Young in Heading South, a well-acted but misguided tale of displaced sexual longing on the beaches of Baby Doc Duvalier's 1970s Haiti.

Read Full Review >
50

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

Rampling is fascinating as Ellen, the aging romantic who hardens her vulnerability with a materialist philosophy regarding the buying and selling of sex. The other two actresses give more superficial performances, with Young totally unconvincing as a Southern neurotic.

Read Full Review >

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 7.0 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Fred M. gave it a10:
The film's theme - middle age female sexual tourists in the hellish Haiti of the 1970s - will undoubtedly be misunderstood by those seeking a conventional fantasy island romance or a political thriller. The story develops in a rather simplistic way presenting its characters without being judgmental at a pace commesurable to the island life. Its portrait of white women in their 50s paying poor young black men for sex and the murderous brutality of the Haitian political regime is presented realistically without melodrama. It is refreshing to see a film attempting to capture life in Haiti as it really was without resorting to Hollywood fakery and not being afraid of presenting older women driven by sexual desire.

Stuart S. gave it an8:
This film is about sex but if you think this is a "sexy" film you will be surprised. A profound look about a subject I knew nothing about in a world before the AIDS crisis.

Ken G. gave it a4:
Nothing really works here. Much of film is simply too dull, and talky, with little going on, until it makes a belated, and rather clumsy attempt to drag itself into thriller territory late in the story. Also, the characters aren't really well drawn, (accept for Rampling). Young's character is seriously underwritten. You get little sense that anyone was giving much thought to her character, as she almost comes off as a silly romance novel heroine, as the lonely woman, feverishly determined to recapture the lone organism of her live, with her dream lover. Please, couldn't they have just made her a woman looking to reconnect with the guy she had great sex with? And her "dream lover" is too much of a blank page to make it believable that both Young and Rampling would be madly in love with him. The fact that he was a blank page, might have been filmmaker's point. That the women didn't care who he was, they just wanted to use him. But it doesn't work. And the plump French woman, just seems to be hanging around the movie for no particular reason. The filmmakers simply weren't as interested in developing their story and characters, as they were in delivering messages about women, sexual tourism, exploitation, and colonization.

Je B. gave it a3:
Great actors, fascinating location--terrible script. So bad, it's laughable. No believable characters. These over 40 women have no lives. Apparently, their only pleasure is screwing young black men. Dialogue that makes one's eyes roll to the back of the head. Was hoping for a political film about Haiti in the 70s. This is a film made by aging males with an ax to grind.

Ken G. gave it a4:
Nothing really works here. Much of film is simply too dull, and talky, with little going on, until it makes a belated, and rather clumpsy attempt to drag itself into thriller territory late in the story. Also, the characters aren't really well drawn, (accept for Rampling). Young's character is seriously underwritten. You get little sense that anyone was giving much thought to her character, as she almost comes off as a silly romance novel heroine, as the lonely woman, feverishly determined to recapture the lone organism of her live, with her dream lover. Please, couldn't they have just made her a woman looking to reconnect with the guy she had great sex with? And her "dream lover" is too much of a blank page to make it believeable that both Young and Rampling would be madly in love with him. The fact that he was a blank page, might have been filmmaker's point. That the women didn't care who he was, they just wanted to use him. But it doesn't work. And the plump French woman, just seems to be hanging around the movie for no particular reason. The filmmakers simply weren't as interested in developing their story and characters, as they were in delivering messages about women, sexual tourism, exploitation, and colonization.

Je B. gave it a3:
great actors, fascinating locatiion--terrible script. so bad, it's laughable. no believeable characters. these over 40 women have no lives. apparently, their only pleasure is screwing young black men. dialogue that makes one's eyes roll to the back of the head. was hoping for a political film abt. Haiti in the 70s. this is a film made by aging males with an ax to grind.

George R. gave it a2:
great fertile material, excavated wonderfully for the first forty minutes and then it completely pooped out on itself, becoming laughably bad. more like an essay than a compelling narrative. and then more like pure nonsense than a movie. pity - the theater was packed with disappointed hopefuls, spurred on by critics.

Read more user comments >

Popular on CBS sites: SEC Football | NFL | Video Game Cheats | iPhone | Video Game Reviews | Notebooks | Antivirus Software

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use