Review of Heading South (2006) by Keng. — 09 Aug 2006

Nothing really works here. Much of film is simply too dull, and talky, with little going on, until it makes a belated, and rather clumpsy attempt to drag itself into thriller territory late in the story.

Also, the characters aren't really well drawn, (accept for Rampling). Young's character is seriously underwritten. You get little sense that anyone was giving much thought to her character, as she almost comes off as a silly romance novel heroine, as the lonely woman, feverishly determined to recapture the lone organism of her live, with her dream lover.

Please, couldn't they have just made her a woman looking to reconnect with the guy she had great sex with? And her "dream lover" is too much of a blank page to make it believeable that both Young and Rampling would be madly in love with him.

The fact that he was a blank page, might have been filmmaker's point. That the women didn't care who he was, they just wanted to use him. But it doesn't work. And the plump French woman, just seems to be hanging around the movie for no particular reason.

The filmmakers simply weren't as interested in developing their story and characters, as they were in delivering messages about women, sexual tourism, exploitation, and colonization.