At the outset of director Laurent Cantet's "Vers le sud" ("Heading South"), we meet three American ladies-of-a-certain-age on the beach of a plush resort: worldly-wise Ellen (Charlotte Rampling), fragile Brenda (Karen Young) and easygoing Sue (Louise Portal) have come there to escape their troubles and rediscover their sensuality.

Key to that rediscovery is the beautiful young Adonis named Legba (Menothy Cesar), a very busy boy who escapes his own sexual (and economic) troubles there, too -- but faces new ones in the form of a fatal rivalry for his affections.

Cantet's two previous films -- "Human Resources" (2000) and "Time Out" (2001) -- were concerned with social irony and inequity. This one is even more so, for its setting in Haiti, where the gap between rich and poor is so gigantic, and where sex is an instrument of power, the currency for commercial arrangements that are, however, not without love.

Cantet retains Laferriere's monologue device by which the women speak very bluntly about their desire, telling the story -- or their "side" of it -- in their own words, devoid of value judgments and moralism.

Scenic prettiness is stripped away. The dialogue is in a lovely (subtitled) mix of French, English and Creole, with only fragmentary references to (and an elliptical understanding at best of) the political situation. There are bullying macoutes. Legba is in some kind of "trouble" with them. The three foreign women are no less clueless about all this than we are, and about whether, or how much, he really cares for any of them.

"Let me give you a word of advice -- Legba belongs to everyone. Give him a free reign. He makes the decisions." Which advice, the other woman in her sensual trance fails to heed.

Then, during the "Baby Doc" Duvalier era, as now, the stunning paradox for white visitors in Haiti is the coexistence of bliss and misery. Cantet prefers the term "love tourism" to "sexual tourism," but the bottom line is that "tourists never die."

At the end of this provocative, unsettling, beautifully acted film, Ellen and Brenda to some extent switch roles. After living it up at the Hotel Haiti, they can check out -- but Legba can never leave.

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