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| 1.84:1 DVD capture: Heading South |
The DVD |
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| Heading South arrives on DVD as a Canadian import from Seville. I'd hoped the distributor's merger with Warner would help bring an end to their practice of using PAL masters, but alas. Although it suffers from the expected combing artifacts and soft definition, the film's 1.84:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer has nice colouring, not to mention fairly supple contrast. The accompanying Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, aided by optional English subtitles during the French passages of dialogue, is simultaneously lively and unassuming--and overall much less problematic than the image. Extras include an untranslated interview with director Laurent Cantet (29 mins.) whose beefy running time suggests something of substance; Heading South's international trailer rounds out the platter. |
The Film
Heading South (Vers le sud) represents such a departure from the milieu of Laurent Cantet's previous film (2001's brilliant psychological thriller Time Out (L'Emploi du temps)) that you can't really say it rounds out a trilogy he started with Human Resources. Nevertheless, it resumes his fascination with people in transience, people who've erected complex façades to avoid the repercussions of personal or professional failure; Cantet's pictures are screwball comedies played straight, and we see ourselves reflected in them like Athene saw herself in the water. Thanks to a chilling, if red herring-laden, prologue wherein a Haitian mother tries to "give" her endangered teenage daughter to a respectable-looking islander, a black cloud looms over the piece--and it's just one of the many ways in which Cantet shrewdly exploits Haiti's mystique without falling back on Serpent and the Rainbow-isms, paving a road to doom down which three middle-aged spinsters defiantly walk. Wellesley professor Ellen (Charlotte Rampling), willowy Midwesterner Brenda (Karen Young, who gets to deliver possibly the screen's finest erotic monologue since Persona), and earthy Montréaler Sue (Louise Portal) are returning guests at a kind of sex resort where they take turns patronizing Legba (Ménothy Cesar), a young gigolo who makes them feel not only beautiful but, critically, maternal, too. (When we first meet Legba, he's curled up in a foetal position on the beach, only to be 'awakened' by Brenda's touch.) Unfolding towards the end of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier's reign of terror, the 1978-set film relies a little too much on a working knowledge of Haiti's political history to sort out its narrative ambiguities, but by the same token, this seems to stave off noble-savage syndrome--of which the characters are guilty but the filmmaker, for a change, is not.-Bill Chambers
© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.
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Buy at Amazon Canada
DVD GRADES:
Image B-
Sound B+
Extras N/A |
DVD VITALS:
Running Time
107 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.84:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
French DD 5.1,
French Stereo
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English (optional)
DVD-9
Region One
Seville
the critic
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Published: September 20, 2006
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