The Edge of Heaven (***)

The current cinematic trend towards exploring apparent truths of globalization shows no signs of stopping, and The Edge of Heaven, by director Fatih Akin (Head-On), is bound to impress savvy-seeming audiences and critics alike (it already won best screenplay at Cannes). Concerning a family in Germany and one in Turkey, the film uses two deaths to suggest a sequence of socio-political mirroring and counterbalancing between the two countries, and within the nascent European Union as a whole. But The Edge of Heaven’s topicality and clever, labyrinthine plotting (people keep missing each other by a hair’s breadth) isn’t quite enough: it’s too long (and, consequently, seems a tad self-important) and its characters, though wrapped in Akin’s concerted realism, are largely flat—be they shrill, lesbian student radicals; a sensitive, asexual professor; or an aging, jaded whore.”

The Edge of Heaven is now playing at the Cumberland (159 Cumberland St.).