This is Haiti in the late seventies, and the story line here is taken from three short stories by Haitian-born Dany Laferrière, who managed to escape unscathed to Québec a long time ago. This is unusual in that it deals with sex tourism of the not normally covered kind: middle-aged women going on holiday to be fucked by young blacks. Or should that be, as two of them here are deluded, made love to?
Ellen (Charlotte Rampling) is an improbable university teacher of French in Boston; Brenda (Karen Young) is bored in Georgia most of the time; and Sue (Louise Portal) is a manager of a household goods warehouse in Montréal. The story mainly concerns Ellen and Brenda, who, they think, are in love with the randy eighteen-year-old Legba (Ménothy César) and shower presents and money on him in return for sex and affection: Brenda is particulary smitten as she seduced Legba when he was fifteen and she had her first orgasm at forty-four. They think Haiti is paradise.
Speaking from personal experience of the country, paradise is one of the last words I'd use of this weird but admittedly fascinating country, as Ellen and Brenda will discover. This was the era of Jean-Claude ('Bébé Doc') and his infamous Tontons Macoutes, his thugs who terrify the Haitians, and who will soon dispense with Legba. Paradise lost.
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