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Review of “The Edge of Heaven”

A depiction of lives colliding and converging in modern Istanbul and Hamburg, The Edge of Heaven is the latest film from Turkish-German director Fatih Akin (Head-On). Well received at the Cannes film festival and beautifully crafted, the movie features a lesbian couple at the center of its complex East-meets-West plot.

The film is a clever, twisting affair, making use of three languages and multiple concurrent story lines (much like Crash or 21 Grams). But thanks to an excellent sense of pacing and strong, assured performances from the six leads, everything is quite easy to follow. It’s even organized neatly into three (dramatically named) chapters: “The Death of Yeter,” “The Death of Lotte” and “The Edge of Heaven.” Each segment follows a specific character set until their paths merge and the threads unravel.

The story opens with Ali Aksu (Tuncel Kurtiz), a cheerful elderly man who frequents a beautiful prostitute, Yeter (Nursel Köse). Before long, he asks her to move in with him, and she accepts. Ali lives with his son, Nejat (Baki Davrak), a professor at a German university. The three share a relatively happy life until Ali has a heart attack and turns into an angry and jealous man. He hits Yeter in a bout of rage, accidentally killing her and prompting Nejat to move to Istanbul in search of Yeter’s daughter.

Nurgül Yesilçay

We meet the daughter, Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay), as she is running from the cops at a student protest. She is a revolutionary and a fighter, and she narrowly escapes arrest only to go into hiding in Germany. Looking for food on a university campus, she meets a sweet German student, Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska), beginning the film’s central love affair.

Hanna Schygulla (left) and Patrycia Ziolkowska

Lotte takes Ayten into her home (and, if the cliché rings true, her heart) and they fall in love, despite the trepidation of Lotte’s reserved mother, Susanne (Hanna Schygulla). Ayten is unfortunately arrested for entering Germany illegally and is sent to prison in Istanbul. Lovesick, Lotte follows her, moving into Nejat’s flat while she tries to help Ayten’s case.

At its heart, this is a film about father/son and mother/daughter pairs, although the central relationship (and only romantic love story) is between Lotte and Ayten. While both characters are appealing, Ayten especially catches the eye. We first meet her in action, fleeing police at the violent protest – the perfect entrance for such a strong, fiery character. It’s easy to see why Lotte is so taken with her, although it seems a bit contrived that she would invite a stranger to live in her home. (Could anyone truly be so naïve?)

All of the couple’s scenes together are sweet and believable, even if Lotte’s initial overwhelming generosity isn’t. Great strength and chemistry bridge the cultural and social barriers between these women, and a “love conquers all” undercurrent runs through their story line.

Yesilçay (left) and Ziolkowska

It’s wonderfully refreshing to see a multi-ethnic lesbian couple at the center of a film that isn’t billed as a “queer movie,” and to see that their sexuality is a non-issue. In fact, the couple is presented as remarkably balanced and happy. Even when Ayten is hauled off to jail, Lotte fights the Turkish legal system for the right to see her partner, and she gets herself into more than her fair share of trouble trying to help Ayten continue her fight from inside her cell.

The acting is excellent across the board, with strong performances from each lead. Davrak is excellent as the thoughtful Nejat, while Köse plays the mysterious Yeter with a mix of whimsy and wariness. Schygulla is understated at first as Susanne, but by the end of the film she turns in an Oscar-worthy performance. Yesilçay gives Ayten just the right combination of sexy, smart and tough, while Ziolkowska tempers Lotte’s wide-eyed naiveté with the sense of dedication and direction that the character so desperately needs to be believable.

Yesilçay

The film runs on a sly sense of interconnectedness, peppering scenes with the characters’ near misses and almost-encounters on the streets. With so many of the characters searching for each other (Nejat looking for Ayten, Ayten looking for her mother, etc.), these near misses add dramatic irony and humor to the proceedings.

As a result, the movie’s tone is quite playful despite the often deadly serious subject matter. It takes deft direction to make a movie with imprisonment, heavy social commentary and two violent deaths fun to watch, but Akin has done just that.

Some critics have chided the film for its multiple story lines, a technique that is quickly becoming clichéd in modern cinema (Babel, Magnolia, 21 Grams — the list goes on). And some of the coincidences are indeed a bit contrived, particularly Lotte’s arrival at Nejat’s bookstore (and her moving into his empty room) while he is searching for Ayten. This is The Edge of Heaven‘s biggest flaw: its tendency to be just a little too cute with the parallels and missed connections.

But despite this minor problem, the film absolutely oozes quality. The cinematography is truly breathtaking – with sweeping panoramas and panning footage of the countryside and cityscapes of both Germany and Turkey – painting an incredibly vibrant portrait of the different locales.

And the film captures the East-meets-West sensibility of Istanbul particularly well and without ignoring its ugly underside. In fact, there’s plenty of commentary on Turkey’s place in the world mixed in with the drama. At one point, Ayten and Lotte’s mother argue about the nature of protest and Turkey’s archaic policies. Ayten insists on fighting for the people’s rights, while Susanne just keeps repeating, “maybe things will be better when Turkey joins the European union,” a nice (if oversimplified) allegory for the two worlds the film represents.

Of course, viewers don’t need to be up on Eastern European current events to enjoy the film, as its themes are decidedly universal. The Edge of Heaven proves that director Fatih Akin has what it takes to create moving, relevant work that appeals to everyone in the spectrum. It’s a fantastic film in its own right, so the fact that a lesbian relationship factors in so prominently is icing on the diversity-minded cake.

Watch the trailer for Edge of Heaven:

The Edge of Heaven is currently in theaters in the United Kingdom; go here for screening dates. It will be released in select cities in the United States on May 21, 2008.

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