MovieChat Forums > Vers le sud (2006) Discussion > Brilliantly novel, morally bankrupt

Brilliantly novel, morally bankrupt


Top marks for taking on such a new and uncharted subject. With larger numbers of women in Western society having difficulty finding suitable partners and the practice of men in those societies leaving their older partners for younger women, this brand of sex tourism must certainly have flourished since the late 1970's in which the film is set. And more so.

But why so much whitewash? This is prostitution, exploitation, sexism, racism with all of the disgusting ugliness that many in Western society attach to the practice when it is the old unattractive fat white men seeking sexual pleasure with impoverished young negro, latino or asian women. From the scene in which the boys are made to sit around the women at the beach as if they were dogs being fed from the table, the recounted story of the sexual abuse of Legba as a minor by Brenda on her first visit, to her obscene arrogance in concluding that Legba actually derived any sense of joy in his role as her paid escort. In all this we see the treatment of people as animals, and the belief by the abusers that this treatment is a true expression of kindness.

So does this mean we should now ease up on all the male sex tourists? Well that's up to you. But this is one area were a distinction between males and females certainly can't be justified.

Were these women lonely, vulnerable, emotionally maimed by the cruelty of the societies from which they came? Most probably. Did they inflict their misery on the young Haitians with whom they came into contact? Definitely.

Hopefully some viewers will draw their own conclusions about the inner ugliness of the female characters, but the screenplay certainly let these women off far too lightly.


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Well, considering that in our society men who get involved with underage females are more likely to be chastised or prosecuted than women who get involved with underage males, what did you expect?

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Men are more likely to be chastised or prosecuted with underage females. In a grossly disproportionate amount of the time, compared to women with underage boys, they are involved.
There was no underage sex in the film, although an incident from the past was discussed. So it was only financial exploitation between consenting adults. It was also exploring who was exploiting who more, the Haitian men were doing nicely for themselves, although I don't think that justifies 'sex tourism' in any way.

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to me when you say 'men are more likely to be chastised or prosecuted with underage females' than vice-versa you all give the impression that it should be OK that some old fart could abuse a minor

on the other side of the coin older women having sex w/ younger boys is rare b/c women have higher moral standards.

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Consenting adults or not, this was clearly a case of the advantaged abusing the disadvantaged. How were the Haitian men doing nicely for themselves? What did they really have, except for the few scraps thrown at them like dogs, a few pennies for a bus here, and a few dollars for a sleazy pimp shirt there? There was no chance for real assistance, access to an education, a real job, a better way of life, a decent home. The women kept dangling securing a passport for them over their heads like carrots, but the chance to escape from their impoverished circumstances never materialized, because they were in exactly the social situation the women wanted them to remain in. How else would they be able to continue exploiting them and forcing them the indulge their selfish fantasies. Clearly when the film gave brief glimpses of how the boys really felt about the prostitution, it was distasteful to them. What choices or power did they have in the situation? They either solicited themselves, or didn't eat. That's hardly a mutually beneficial situation, an exchange between equals. Also, this film certainly implies child molestation very strongly, not only in the recounting of Brenda raping Legba when he was 15 (when Brenda recounts it she's very specific about her actions being violent and frenzied. We shouldn't glamorize this into anything other than rape simply because it was a woman perpetrator on a teenage boy), but when the littler boy, who wants to be like the bigger boys begins dancing on the beach, and Brenda dances with him, Legba gets very angry and sends him on his way. I didn't interpret that as jealousy over Brenda, I interpreted that as Legba being pissed off that Brenda would try to seduce the little boy, and rape him as she had Legba. He was protecting the boy from the American, who would make him a child whore. There were also several times when other characters mentioned that the boy was far too young. If all that doesn't imply that there was a strong element of child molestation in this particular type of sex tourism, just as distasteful as American male sex tourism in Cambodia, I don't know what does. The scenes with the little boy made me ill, because it was clear to me what was being hinted.

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Out of curiosity... at what age IS a Haitian boy considered an adult? If it's 15, then Legba would have been an adult the entire time.

One thing I see being left out of discussion is that there is a culture difference here. There is a tendency to see other races through our set of rules.

Now, the 3 women did come across as very selfish, namely because they were cheating on their husbands (I may be wrong about Sue). They seemed a bit whiney, and the resulting competition over 1 man, when there's a whole bloody island of men there, shows jealousy and greed.

The subject matter was certainly interesting, but I found myself falling asleep at points; some scenes just seemed to drag on too long.

I missed the scene(s) where it showed Legba trying to get out of his role as paid escort. To me, the story abruptly changed to show two policemen(?) dragging two bodies from their car. I couldn't tell who, and when Albert discovers the bodies the next morning, I was unable to identify them from the short view of the faces.
(I replayed the scenes just before the body dumping part, just in case I had nodded off then)

If anyone can point out what it was I missed, please toss it out there.

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Age of consent for both sexes is 18yrs in Haiti.
Thugs dumped the bodies of Legba and the Haitian girl from the limo. IMO, it was her 'connections' that got them killed.

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Agree with her connections as reason they were killed. It seemed obvious to me from the moment he entered her car and heard about her new situation...and her naive blathering on about needing a confidante...and from the look on the driver's face...that they were both likely to be murdered. Especially him - that was inevitable. And he knew it.

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I agree that Ellen and Brenda are selfish, but neither of them is married (as is made clear in the movie.) Both Ellen and Brenda are acutely lonely; at 55, Ellen is unable to find a mate in the US. Brenda has always felt unloved. Sue doesn't seem to be married either, though that isn't addressed directly. This doesn't excuse what they do, but it's part of the complex and rather sad situation the film explores.

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The white women in this film WERE taking advantage of the young boys this is a FACT. So I think it is hypocritical to say that while white men are criticized for sex tourism white women should be excused that's total BS and sexist.

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how you figured that!? you have funnel vision like a mf. those women took advantage of males from an impoverish country. most will do anything for money, but if paid for sex who will refuse

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Now, the 3 women did come across as very selfish, namely because they were cheating on their husbands (I may be wrong about Sue). They seemed a bit whiney, and the resulting competition over 1 man, when there's a whole bloody island of men there, shows jealousy and greed.

the synoptic did say: 3 BITTER women vacation in Haiti to have sex with young men

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Watch the scene when the bodies are dumped again. It is clearly the same model car that was chasing Legba earlier, when the lighter-skinned man got out of the car, chased Legba around the town, and shot at him. I believe the lighter-skinned man was the chauffeur, who was driving, when the young black woman picked Legba up in the limousine. My take on that whole scenario was that the young black woman and Legba were once sweethearts, but each fell into prostitution as a matter of survival. The young black woman was being kept by an older, powerful gentleman, and it was him limo and chauffeur. When they were riding in the limo, she made a pointing of making the chauffeur look at Legba, and told him to remember his face. I think she was intentionally antagonizing her patron, knowing the chauffeur would tell his boss. I don't think she realized, when she was trying to make her patron jealous, that she was disposable, and it would result in her and Legba's deaths. I think Legba knew he was a doomed when the powerful man's chauffeur chased him, and that's why he visited his Mom, said goodbye, and left her his money.

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Bringing up the cultural differences and alluding that perhaps Legba was an adult in his country is ridiculous, a cop out to justify actions in a foreign country, that we know are morally wrong. I'm an anthropologist, and I know all about ethnocentrism, but Americans are known notoriously around the world for for going over to other countries to take their proverbial craps, do their dirt, getting nasty and doing things, sometimes abominable things, they'd never get away with in America. Just talk to any young girl from Nigeria. The women in the film kept mentioning that they were different there, that the rules were different, but that's not really true, because your morality is part of you and should go wherever you go. Morality is in the eye of the person committing the act. If you were raised in America to believe a 15 year old boy is a child, then from your moral perspective, he's still a child, no matter if he's in Haiti, or Fiji, or Timbuktu. From his perspective, he may be a man and is morally justified to act like a man, but your actions should be gauged by your own moral perspective. These are all just excuses to justify behavior we know damned well is unacceptable. America is already spiraling into a cesspool of filthy depravity as far as child sexual abuse is concerned. I can't believe the increase in abductions and rapes there are on the news. Do we really need to sink any lower into it by excusing women who commit these acts as guiltlessly as men regularly do?

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Yes, I agree, but she cleary say :"we pay for young love".
This not hypocrisy, they don´t hide nothing.

If this is bad or good, is another question.
You can think in this way Lagda could eat, and dressing and have a nice time with some money.
It would be different if the black boys would be force to have sex.

I know, this is not a good way to live, but I thing that the REAL INMORAL, if the starvation, and the bad goverment sopported by big and rich "democracy", that use this place to hollydays and dirty bussines.



Oscar from Rosario-Argentina

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but they ARE FORCED TO HAVE SEX! If you have no food and are starving (as a huge amount of the population in Haiti are), and someone says to you "I'll give you food and a few dollars if you have sex with me", what choice do you have? You either have sex or starve to death. That is forced, it's coercion! A decent person would have given them food and asked nothing in return. Also, the story that Brenda tells about jumping on Legba and having sex with him when he was 15 was forced, it was rape. She lured him away to a secluded spot and initiated sex with him. He had no say in it. She didn't ask him if he wanted to participate. She just began touching him and jumped on him, violently according to her. Clearly, it had been traumatic for him, because he got angry when she began dancing with the little boy.

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What I'll say here is not about the ‘moral issue’ about the female sex tourists depicted in this film. After all, I don't see anything extremely morally wrong about what they did with these muscular young men. Men have been doing these for thousands of years, sometimes with much younger girls. However, what I’ll say is I have noticed this film once again fell into the typical Western film pit when dealing with third world countries: The local people were constantly in fear and misery inflicted by 'their own people' while the Westerns always provide some kind of sanctuary, one way or the other. Even though the film provided a short monologue by Albert describing how his father and grandfather hated the invading Americans, over all the film exudes the sentimentality that the locals suffered from their own people, not from the outsider Westerns. This view was also extensively expressed in 'The Constant Gardener’. To me, this is more ‘morally corrupt’ in the film itself than what it depicted how and what these three lonely women did with the local men while vacationing in Haiti.

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I disagree they fell in 'the typical Western film pit.'
IMO the film-maker was making an observation about how westerners behave in 3rd world countries, particularly tourists who are on a intimate level with the locals. This misconception they have about somehow taking them away from the 'misery and turmoil' of their country to the 'happiness and safety' of the west. That anyone of them would jump at such an offer of freedom. When 'Legba' was offered such a deal by one of the women he didn't really even consider it, he was happy with where he was at.

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The human world IS morally bankrupt and anything that spells it out or shows it is something to be revered. Other than saying what is obvious to most, let us play out our lives in the stinking cess pit of depraved excess and then depart into the abyss. Happy sailing.

Nothing exists more beautifully than nothing.

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lol - your glass is half empty I take it

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On the contrary, my glass is ALWAYS overflowing.

Nothing is more beautiful than nothing.

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A very good observation. Very well written there is a double standard that is often never adressed. Some womenare seeking and paying young men for sex.

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I think there were great themes in this flick (desperate loneliness, separation of classes and cultures, grinding poverty, worlds that can never understand each other). Having said that, I think the flick bombed on all counts. Nothing was really explored with any depth. It was an unfocused mess in my opinion. And that dialogue. I can't believe that well-respected actors could say those lines without walking off the set. This film was both praised and panned by critics, and I'm definitely in the latter camp.

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that's why gigolos exist

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Wonderful chat about a disturbing film. Thanks everyone.

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"I think Legba knew he was a doomed when the powerful man's chauffeur chased him, and that's why he visited his Mom, said goodbye, and left her his money."

Yes, he knew he was doomed YET he didn't take up the offer to leave? He could have sent his mother even more money from Boston. I'm sure there were many thoughts going on in his head as he made those last fatal decisions. Why no "Legba" moment where we get his inner dialog like we do with the others? It would have been a VERY poignant way to end the film! It would have been great it get into his head. Perhaps this is why books about such things tend to be better than films about such things.

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I wouldn't paint Brenda and Hellen with the same paintbrush. I think the most interesting point in the movie was how by the end these two turned out to be opposite from what they first appeared to be. First we think Brenda is looking for romantic love and Hellen only cares about sex. But look how wrong these assumptions turn out to be at the end: Hellen was actually in love with the boy and Brenda was an egotist, who having discovered sex only recently, will now forever be its slave.

And yes, I agree that raping a 15-year old boy on a vacation abroad is a crime. But let's not forget, Brenda is a substance abusing and mentally unstable person, so she'll get her punishment, no doubt about that at the film's closing. Feeding hungry unemployed boys in exchange for sex however doesn't seem as disgusting to me, especially when a woman's heart becomes involved. And both Hellen and Sue couldn't resist falling in love. One cannot help feeling compassion for them. And a little bit of disgust, but that's what makes this film so worthwhile.

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