Vers le sud 2006

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: At 60, with three 2006 releases in the can, Rampling still seems an international treasure, a great camera subject and a truly daring actress. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: The film is too slow for my taste, but for perfectly formed characters and authentic human conflict, Heading South is beautifully written, carefully photographed and eventually devastating. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Cantet's fascinating, troubling drama has many meanings. Read more

Tom Keogh, Seattle Times: An unsettling drama by the director of two other remarkable films about class illusions, Human Resources and Time Out. Read more

Steve Murray, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Exploring female desire in a way films rarely do, Heading South is a film of sometimes subtle, sometimes blunt metaphors for the interaction of rich and pauperized countries. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: But though the women talk a lot about the soul-changing effects of great sex, Cantet largely steers clear of cinematic sensuality, making his heroines' satisfaction -- and the way it exploits the poor -- primarily theoretical. Read more

Kerry Lengel, Arizona Republic: The movie avoids devolving into polemic by treating its characters as individuals. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: A nervy but muddleheaded work ... with sharply unpleasant things to say about the First World's moral strip-mining of the Third but an overly tactful way of saying them. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: 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 more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: The new film by Laurent Cantet (Human Resources and the masterpiece Time Out) is evocative and disturbing. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: What is surprising is the delicacy with which Rampling and Cantet -- himself better known as a chronicler of men -- create a character of such potent feminine hunger. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: Heading South is an absorbing extension of Cantet's abiding obsession with the seeding of political inequality in intimate relations. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: In Laurent Cantet's fine new film Heading South, the amorous travelers aren't men but well-heeled, middle-aged women from North America, and their playground is lawless Haiti. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: A well-acted but misguided tale of displaced sexual longing on the beaches of Baby Doc Duvalier's 1970s Haiti. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Heading South is a seemingly straightforward and simple picture that's really defiantly complex, sexually, politically and emotionally. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The film offers something unusual, a tragic spectacle of normal, recognizable and utterly sympathetic people condemning themselves. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The regal Rampling has never been finer, and Cesar makes his character surprisingly proud and sympathetic. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Suffering from a surfeit of addled ambition, it's intellectually feverish but dramatically languid, one of those overreaching movies that tries awfully hard to seem deep but ends up as shallow as a tide pool. Read more

Susan Walker, Toronto Star: Cantet never finds the keys to his characters in Heading South and fails to give them life beyond the politicized representations imposed on them by Laferriere. Read more

Wally Hammond, Time Out: It's a delight; an entertaining, moving, audacious and stimulating conversation about happiness, love, jealousy, fear, race, sex, class, and social and colonial oppression -- in short, the relationship between the personal and the political. Read more

Jay Weissberg, Variety: Albert's bitterness deserved further development, but the real puzzle is why Cantet doesn't let Legba have a say. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: An intelligent movie, not so much salacious as affecting but ultimately less analytical than overwrought... Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: 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 more