But The Edge of Heaven succeeds not because of its bigness, but because Akin takes us straight and deep into the characters. Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz) is a retired widower from Turkey who has long lived in Germany, where his son, Nejat (Baki Davrak), has grown up, and where he is now a professor at a German university. The old man, Ali, is a drinker, a gambler, a guy who cooks and grows tomatoes in his back garden. On a ramble through Bremen's red light district, he meets up with Yeter (Nursdel Kose), a prostitute who herself hails from Turkey. Ali makes Yeter a proposition: Come live with me, and I will pay you what you earn here in this brothel.
Akin has structured The Edge of Heaven in chapters, in a circular, time-skewing way, and he has given each chapter a title. I won't give them away here, but they alert the viewer to significant events to befall certain characters. But knowing what's to come doesn't diffuse the drama, or the emotional jolt. In some uncanny way, the title cards make the outcome more devastating.
Yeter has a daughter back in Istanbul: Ayten (Nurgul Yesilcay), a 27-year-old student radical. Mother and daughter have lost touch. The daughter comes to Germany to look for Yeter, and is befriended by Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska), a student who offers the broke and homeless Ayten a room. The young women become lovers. Lotte's mother - played by the remarkable Hanna Schygulla - looks on, worried and angry, as her daughter falls for this brooding foreigner.
