MovieChat Forums > Vers le sud (2006) Discussion > If they were men

If they were men

posted 18 years ago by hanspatrick
12 replies | jump to latest

I think the difficulties of this film for many on this board was that the men are young black Haitians, being paid to sleep with older white women, and the reality that older women may have to pay young boys to sleep with them as in contrast to older men is considered taboo.

(As quated in the movie by one of the women charters …If you feel uncomfortable about paying them then just given them gifts. …I knew one day I would pay for young men for sex one day I just didn’t think in twould be so soon.)

The women in this film speak about a very taboo subject that in reality women do pay for sex but real more so cry for love. Taking advantage of a young man for a woman as in contrast to a man taking advantage of a younger women is even more taboo.

More frightening if this film were men in reverse and they were sleeping with women would this board feeling be the same?

[–] LordBling 17 years ago

I think it would be similar, IF the director showed the women to be having fun doing what they do, and enjoying the company of the older men. I felt a little repulsed at first, because it just looked like an alternate version of Pasolini's 'Salo,' but once we saw the young men and how they enjoyed the attention, it didn't feel quite that way.

However, there is definitely a double-standard in our society, and I'm sure it largely wouldn't be interpreted that way, regardless of how the director portrays it.

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"Life is cheap. It only takes one bullet."

[–] cornelia123 17 years ago

I liked the film how it is. Yes, it's a double-standard in our society, that is the point of the film, at least one of them.

[–] interlingua_usa 17 years ago

Which is this "our society" in which this double standard exists? I think it's a double standard with currency in many/most cultures: people are more willing to excuse, endorse, ignore men paying for sex than they are women paying for sex.

[–] jake14853 16 years ago

Excuse me? Are you kidding me? What's up with your biased Femi-nazi crap?

The usual M.O. of western society is like this:

- Men are sick, depraved losers if they pay for sex or intimacy.

- Women who pay for sex are the VICTIMS of male neglect or abuse, and are sadly 'forced' to pay for sex in order to heal their broken souls.

.... NOW who's dealing with double standards? We live in a scoeity that has been flipped over on it's head: automatically blame the Male and slap the 'victim' label on the Female - all without due cause or analysis.

I think that society is more willing to overlook female sexual perversions over men's. Just look at how America treats female pedophiles and sex offenders like those teachers that sleep with their male students, like Debra LaFavre. They're treated with a high degree of fascination, even. And so are white women who go to Third World countries to sleep with slum-dwellers. The racist and sexist dynamics are pretty repulsive - furthermore if this film was about male sex tourists you can be DAMN sure there would be an outrage. Is it a coincidence that this film about female sex tourists hasn't caused many ripples? I think not.

[–] king_faraday 15 years ago

I think that society is more willing to overlook female sexual perversions over men's. Just look at how America treats female pedophiles and sex offenders like those teachers that sleep with their male students, like Debra LaFavre. They're treated with a high degree of fascination, even. And so are white women who go to Third World countries to sleep with slum-dwellers. The racist and sexist dynamics are pretty repulsive - furthermore if this film was about male sex tourists you can be DAMN sure there would be an outrage. Is it a coincidence that this film about female sex tourists hasn't caused many ripples? I think not.

I'm a Black man and I could barely make it through 20 minutes of this shyte. This is just another form of white sumpremacist thinking. These old broads had to go to Haiti to find someone poor enough to want to bang them. They treated these guys like objects to be used and disgarded.

[–] pug32 15 years ago

that's bull. this country is all about beauty. Debra LaFavre got over b/c she is hot, same w/ Mary Kay Letourneau. like the arresting officer said if Mary Kay Letourneau was old and fat w/ a wart on her face everybody would have called for her head not making movies of the week of her plot

[–] garethbridges 16 years ago

If that is what you think Interlingua, then I think you really got things back to front and hence missed a significant but subtle point in the movie.

Imagine a movie centred on three middle aged guys having sex with underage prostitutes in Thailand. Imagine a sensitive, sympathetic film showing how loneliness and dysfunctional society in the west drove those guys to that situation. Can you imagine such a film?! Hell no! Guys paying for sex in a thrid world country would NEVER be treated so sympathetically. That is the double standard.

I know guys who have done the Bangkok thing, and they are usually guys who have all but given up on the traditional estern relationship.

[–] king_faraday 15 years ago

Imagine a movie centred on three middle aged guys having sex with underage prostitutes in Thailand. Imagine a sensitive, sympathetic film showing how loneliness and dysfunctional society in the west drove those guys to that situation. Can you imagine such a film?! Hell no! Guys paying for sex in a thrid world country would NEVER be treated so sympathetically. That is the double standard.

I wholeheartedly agree.

[–] TracesOfLove 11 years ago

"Imagine a movie centred on three middle aged guys having sex with underage prostitutes in Thailand. Imagine a sensitive, sympathetic film showing how loneliness and dysfunctional society in the west drove those guys to that situation. Can you imagine such a film?! Hell no! Guys paying for sex in a thrid world country would NEVER be treated so sympathetically. That is the double standard."

I would really like to see a film like that! It would be honest all around. I thought this film was honest like that. I was horrified by the women in this. At the same time it made me understand why they were doing what they were doing. But that didn't make less horrified.

...even in a valley without mountains the wind could still blow.

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] seanymphette 15 years ago

I'm with you on this hanspatrick, and I'm a woman. This film highlighted an ugliness, racist, sexist, and classist, that we (Americans of both sexes) don't want to cop to. But I think part of the reason we don't want to admit the depravity that some older women sink to, is that it may be a direct result of our society having discarded them as sex/love interests in the first place. We'd like to think that when the men their own age cast them off for their younger trophy wives, that these older women just get themselves to a nunnery so to speak, and just settle for a lonely, loveless, sexless spinsterhood, but that's not the reality. People, especially women, are living much longer, healthier lives and are not ready to just "sew it up" at 45 years of age. The unfortunate fallout is that now these women are imitating the worst behavior, traditionally an exclusive territory of men. Although, this film IS French, and I think French Madames & Madamoiselles may have been secretly exploiting gigolos as far back as the middle ages.

[–] 15 years ago

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