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Starring Baki Davrak, Nursel Kose
Directed by Fatih Akin
The Edge of Heaven is not an easy film.
Akin paints in bleak tones and opens with the chapter title Yeter’s Death, one that quickly establishes a mood of tension and looming dread as several threads pass back and forth between Turkey and Germany.
In Bremen, Turkish Yeter works as a prostitute and befriends elderly Ali who confuses issues of sex and ownership and is soon jailed for manslaughter.
Akin complicates matters with tangled timelines and the death of Lotte, a German student who falls in love with Yeter’s daughter Gül who had fled Turkey on political grounds.
Authority interrupts their fledgling relationship while fate forces the hand of Lotte’s soon-to-be childless mother. There’s an air of the spiritual about the near misses and hits in the affairs of Akin’s characters.
He does ask for a minor leap of faith – there is an element of happenstance that will not suit all tastes.
Yet there’s also an earthy grittiness that keeps events grounded in a reality while quietly, confidently moving to a provocative and hopeful close.
Ultimately The Edge of Heaven is a complex, rewarding and compelling tale about conflicted identity and the hope that comes from sacrifice.
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