SEXUAL TOURISM CONCEPT PUTS `HEADING SOUTH' ON THE MAP.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

`Heading South'' has reportedly found an appreciative audience of middle-age women in New York.

Why is eminently understandable. Set at a Haitian resort in the late-1970s, the film sensitively portrays the feelings of North American women who, past the age of desirability in their peer group, purchase the attentive affections of gorgeous young Haitian men.

Yes, the movie is about sexual tourism, although reversing the usual gender roles really does make a whole lot of difference. While wealthy males doing this with Third World girls would naturally evoke audience disgust, women who feel unloved taking similar steps evokes a more complex and sympathetic reaction.

The movie is not designed to be a fulfillment fantasy, though much of it plays that way. And while its main characters are admirably humanized, this is nevertheless a movie about economic exploitation. It's a very sexual work, but it is far more political at its core.

Adapted from three short stories by Quebec-based Haitian writer Dany Laferriere by the brilliant French director Laurent Cantet (``Human Resources,'' ``Time Out''), the movie is both sensually languid and charged with an underlying unease. The standard soap-opera attractive fellows to take back to their bungalow love nests. And any ventures into the Duvalier regime's capital, Port-au-

Prince, remind tourists and residents alike that their beachside idyll is a bubble of fragile joy surrounded by sudden violence and unending misery.

Queen bee of the encampment is Charlotte Rampling's Ellen. A cynical, Sybaratic French instructor at Wellesley University, she leads the more demur ladies in, supposedly, purely physical celebrations of young black flesh.

But then Brenda (``The Sopranos' '' Karen Young) shows up. On a previous visit with her then-husband, Brenda found herself irresistibly drawn to a local boy named Legba. This led to the first orgasm of her life. She associated this with true love, and a few years later has worked up the courage to return and claim Legba for her soul mate.

Trouble is, he's grown into a man (charmingly and powerfully played by first-time actor Menothy Cesar) who, while happy to service the generous ladies, refuses to be anybody's anything, even their heart's desire. Legba is also the cocksure Ellen's favorite. Nothing as declasse as a catfight grows out of this, but the tension between the two women becomes palpable and explodes in some very observant -- and therefore especially devastating -- accusations.

When the subject isn't sexually related, Cantet wisely focuses most of the film's attention on Legba's life outside of the resort, his dealings with government bullies and strained relationships with family and friends. The result is a fully rounded character, not just someone defined by the fact of their prostitution. And it makes him the film's most important character, not the people who can buy most of what they want from him.

Another effective device is one to-the-camera confessional per character. This enables the women to present their own, inevitably subjective but often well-reasoned, points of view on the perhaps awful thing they're calling a holiday. And by the end of the film, both needy Brenda and haughty Ellen have grown in surprising and probably necessary ways.

But of course, whatever the white women come to realize, they still have options. And because of the way things are, the men who provide them so much pleasure are nowhere near that lucky.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

HEADING SOUTH - Three stars

(Not rated: sex, nudity, violence, drug use, language, racism)

Starring: Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young, Menothy Cesar, Louise Portal, Lys Ambroise.

Director: Laurent Cantet.

Running time: 1 hr. 45 min.

Playing: Town Center 5, Encino; Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Royal, West L.A.; Lido, Newport Beach.

In a nutshell: Complex, if slightly sudsy, look at sex tourism. Partially in French with English subtitles.