You see it all over the Third World, anywhere poverty and beauty converge under balmy skies. A Westerner, north of 45, clearly no longer sexually competitive in the meat markets of the big city, shows up, hunting an arrangement.

In "Heading South," Legba (Menothy Cesar) is black and beautiful, perhaps 18. When he smiles, you think of diamonds, and that gleam is reflected in his bright eyes. The place is a sultry beach resort in Papa Doc's brutal Haiti in the late '70s. It's a land of fear, ruled by thugs, and in certain alleyways, if you are black, the wrong word or the wrong glance or the wrong place at the wrong time will get you dead fast -- so in a sense, Legba is a refugee from the slaughters outside the gate. He knows he's safe amid the turistas .

The rule for the Westerners -- Ellen (the great Charlotte Rampling), Brenda (TV pro Karen Young) and Sue (Louise Portal) -- is: Enjoy the body, the smile, the bright eyes, the intimate exchange of emotions; laugh, drink, dance the night away, but don't get involved. He must stay in his world, and you must return to yours.

Director Laurent Cantet has a wonderful sense of each of these women, and for a while, the film is a kind of game of boy, boy, who's got the boy? But the horror outside leaks inside. "Heading South" doesn't make the mistake that so many Westerners-in-World-3 make, where they concentrate so fully on the horror of the posh observers, they pass on the horror of the exploited. What happens is horrible, and perhaps its biggest horror is how helpful it is to Westerners. It's a metaphor for the ways we look but don't feel a whole lot about what happens in the world's gutters.

In its way, the film is a piercing indictment, though it makes its point without much screaming, hectoring or preening. It's quietly terrific.

-- Stephen Hunter

Contains scenes of violence and intense sexual content.