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Gigolo holidays seduce the French
TimesOnline ^ | 9/10/05 | Matt Campbell

Posted on 09/12/2005 2:45:25 PM PDT by pissant

A FRENCH film has thrown a spotlight on the country’s latest cultural obsession by featuring Charlotte Rampling, the British star, in the role of a middle-aged sex tourist.

The film, Vers le Sud (Heading South), premiered last week at the Venice film festival where it received glowing reviews for its compassionate treatment of women escaping loveless lives to have sex with young men in the tropics.

It is certain to be well received in France, where a series of recent novels and magazine articles exploring the subject of women who pay for sex has taken the country’s well-documented taste for eroticism to new extremes.

The film tells the story of three wealthy American women who travel to Haiti in search of sun and fun just as the country begins its descent into anarchy at the end of the savage regime of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier in the 1980s.

“More than sex, these women are seeking a tenderness that the world is refusing them,” said Laurent Cantet, the director, who has been described as “the most exciting new figure in French cinema” and whose previous films include a drama about the consequences of France’s 35-hour week.

His latest film, which is based on a novel by a Haitian radio journalist, goes in a different direction. The trio of women in their fifties shower Haitian youths with gifts and money in return for sexual favours. Rampling plays Ellen, a veteran sex tourist from Boston, who ends up vying with her friends for the affections of Legba, the most attractive teenage gigolo in the resort.

“Legba represents a metaphor for Ellen,” said Rampling in Venice. “For a while she can dream that he represents all that is most beautiful in the world. This woman could have married, have had children, but she feels a form of desire which is not fulfilled either in her daily life or by her close acquaintances.”

Rampling has long made her home in France — she also has a property in London — and at 60 has come to embody the notion of graceful ageing. She has a reputation for enjoying offbeat, quirky roles and in two previous films — Under the Sand and Swimming Pool — she played women coming to terms with life on their own.

“These are roles which inspire something in me,” said Rampling, who went through a painful break-up with Jean Michel Jarre, the French composer, from whom she was divorced in 1996. “These are roles which appeal to me.”

The film reflects a French literary fad for stories about gigolos. Salamander, by Jean-Christophe Rufin, a luminary of the French literary world, tells the story of Catherine, a 46-year-old single woman who is invited to stay with a friend in Brazil but ends up in the embrace of Gil, a young black gigolo she meets on a beach in Recife. She falls in love with him and, in defiance of the advice of horrified friends and family, decides to sell her home in France to pursue a relationship with him in Brazil.

One reviewer called it “a beautiful love story” that reflected the loneliness of single women “of a certain age” in big French cities. “It reflects the need to have someone to love — and the lengths to which some people will go to find him.”

Pascal Bruckner, the essayist and philosopher, has taken up the theme in his latest book about a bored diplomat leading a double life as a male prostitute. The character decides to become a gigolo after discovering that it excites him when an older woman offers him money to have sex with her.

He rents a flat, puts an advertisement in a magazine and entertains an army of lonely single women before his depravity is exposed when one of them tips off his wife.

Nicole Avril pursues the subject in The Last Production, a novel about a woman who hires a gigolo for evenings of conversation before eventually agreeing to sex; and Josiane Balasko, a former stand-up comic, has written Client, about a woman and her gigolo.

The daughter of a British Army colonel, Rampling, who has two sons — one of them by Jarre — has given what one critic called a “haunting” performance in Heading South. As Ellen, she is a haughty, bossy woman who has nevertheless built up a close relationship with locals after numerous visits to Haiti in search of sex with young men.

Her rivals for the attention of Legba are Brenda, a masochistic Midwesterner, and the earthy Sue. “The hotel,” said Cantet, “is a small bubble where Americans come to forget the reality of their lives, which are filled with frustration, and rediscover their power of seduction. For Legba, the hotel is the only place he can go to escape the harsh reality of this country and find affection.”

He added: “The desire of women is not often talked about in cinema, especially those over 40. Here not only do we talk about it; we listen to the women themselves talk about it.”


TOPICS: Chit/Chat
KEYWORDS: pepelepeau; uselessinformation
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To: Dominic Harr

As Tina Turner would sing "What's Love Got to do With It"!!


21 posted on 09/12/2005 3:21:32 PM PDT by pissant
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To: EX52D

Post your pic and prove it! ;o)


22 posted on 09/12/2005 3:22:03 PM PDT by pissant
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To: pissant

You asked for it...


23 posted on 09/12/2005 3:23:03 PM PDT by EX52D
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To: EX52D

If your pic is even reasonably feminine, there will be stampedes of freepmail to ya! LOL


24 posted on 09/12/2005 3:25:22 PM PDT by pissant
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To: pissant

desperation.....what a scary thing.....


25 posted on 09/12/2005 4:22:23 PM PDT by marmar (435 CASF..Ramstien Germany.....Bringing the Wounded Warriors Home....)
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To: marmar

LOL. It's been going on since the dawn of time!


26 posted on 09/12/2005 4:31:57 PM PDT by pissant
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To: pissant
The only problem is that it gives you the opportunity to hang yourself......proverbial speaking......
27 posted on 09/12/2005 4:43:23 PM PDT by marmar (435 CASF..Ramstien Germany.....Bringing the Wounded Warriors Home....)
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To: pissant

>No wonder they were such easy pickin's!<

You, sir, are a boorish and ignorant twunt.


28 posted on 09/14/2005 6:24:09 AM PDT by ukman
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To: ukman

ROFL. Great word. I'm gonna keep that one!


29 posted on 09/14/2005 6:31:18 AM PDT by pissant
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To: pissant; Owl_Eagle; JimWforBush; ctlpdad; Fierce Allegiance

I see you are supplementing your income as a gigolo now. What will you think of next?


30 posted on 09/14/2005 7:39:01 AM PDT by Jersey Republican Biker Chick (People too weak to follow their own dreams, will always find a way to discourage yours.)
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To: pissant
Jeeves, here's a chance for you to earn some extra $$$

Italian, Spanish, or Greek women, sure, but French women? I'm not sure I need the money that badly. ;)

Unless they look like Laetitia Casta, Sophie Marceau, or the dancers of La Femme...then maybe we can work something out.

31 posted on 09/14/2005 7:44:12 AM PDT by Mr. Jeeves ("Violence never settles anything." Genghis Khan, 1162-1227)
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To: Mr. Jeeves; ukman

Maybe you can ask ukman for some pointers. He's my biggest fan you know.


32 posted on 09/14/2005 7:52:21 AM PDT by pissant
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To: Jersey Republican Biker Chick

Starting a chat site the easily offended!


33 posted on 09/14/2005 7:56:05 AM PDT by pissant
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To: pissant
Where do I sign up. LOL

Hey to change the subject, did you see a tower in that picture? Others had a hard time finding it.

34 posted on 09/14/2005 7:58:21 AM PDT by Jersey Republican Biker Chick (People too weak to follow their own dreams, will always find a way to discourage yours.)
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To: Jersey Republican Biker Chick
I see you are supplementing your income as a gigolo now

This wouldn't supplement my income, I am not that expensive.

35 posted on 09/14/2005 8:03:44 AM PDT by JimWforBush (Alcohol - For the best times you'll never remember)
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To: JimWforBush
True, a couple of shots of Jim Beam and you are there for the taking.

You may not be rich, but I'll bet your smiling!!!

36 posted on 09/14/2005 8:05:48 AM PDT by Jersey Republican Biker Chick (People too weak to follow their own dreams, will always find a way to discourage yours.)
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To: Jersey Republican Biker Chick

What picture? I musta passed out! ;o)


37 posted on 09/14/2005 8:07:23 AM PDT by pissant
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To: pissant
I know you replied Holy Schmoly, so you saw it. But did you see the tower?
38 posted on 09/14/2005 8:09:01 AM PDT by Jersey Republican Biker Chick (People too weak to follow their own dreams, will always find a way to discourage yours.)
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To: Jersey Republican Biker Chick

Ear to ear smiles.


39 posted on 09/14/2005 8:09:10 AM PDT by JimWforBush (Alcohol - For the best times you'll never remember)
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To: JimWforBush

I knew you were.


40 posted on 09/14/2005 8:11:10 AM PDT by Jersey Republican Biker Chick (People too weak to follow their own dreams, will always find a way to discourage yours.)
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