With HUMAN RESOURCES and TIME OUT, Laurent Cantet established himself as one of French cinema's leading realists and analysts of social discontent. His third feature, an investigation of sex tourism, is perhaps his most challenging. The setting is a beach resort in late-‘70s Haiti, under the dictatorship of Duvalier, where middle-aged North American women go to be sexually pampered by young black men, rewarding them with economic and quasi-maternal favours. Basing their script on three stories by the Haitian writer Dany Laferrière, Cantet and regular co-writer Robin Campillo sensitively but trenchantly look into a complex nexus of sexual and political issues. As the ambivalent, possessive, highly knowing Ellen, Charlotte Rampling rides her current career renaissance with cool, abrasive brilliance.
