At the center of Vers le sud (Heading South) is Legba, a hunky and lovable teenage Haitian lad who works as a sort of beach boy at a posh Haitian resort well away from the miseries of Haiti's urban areas in the 1970s.

What Legba really does is provide "companionship" to middle-aged American and European single women who want attention paid to them in an exotic locale with well-muscled and charming young black men with French accents. It's kinda sex tourism, but for the gals.

Legba (Methony Cesar) has long been the special summer companion to Ellen (Charlotte Rampling), about 55, a resort regular who is a Brit and a languages professor from Boston. She is worldly, sophisticated and imperious. She considers Legba basically hers for the summer.

Into this scenario bumbles Brenda (Karen Young), a mouseburger divorcee from Savannah, Georgia, who visited the hotel once three years earlier and had a sexual liaison with Legba. At age 45, she had her first orgasm with him. She is obsessed with him and, once she finds he's still working at the hotel, intends to claim him as hers.

Brenda is clearly not emotionally stable, but Ellen also has issues.

You may think this movie is going to be some kind of cat fight, but it has bigger fish to fry. For one thing, Legba, we see, has a back story no one else in the movie is aware of. The movie explores racism, colonialism, women's issues and class conflict, among other things. Hey, it's a French movie.

It's a poignant story, well told. If you like well-crafted, original dramas, you should check it out.