Lives on the edge

Starring Nurgul Yesilcay, Baki Davrak, Nursel Kose, Patrycia Ziolkowska and Tuncel Kurtiz. Written and directed by Fatih Akin. Not rated. Contains language, violence, sexual material and drug references. In Turkish and German with subtitles. At Landmark's Midtown Art Cinema. 2 hours, 2 minutes.

Bottom Line: Told in three chapters, "Heaven" creates an emotional blockbuster.

Aspiring authors are told, "Write what you know."

Filmmaker Fatih Akin knows the world of Turkish immigrants in Germany. Born in Hamburg and raised in the conflicting cultures of East and West, the 35-year-old Akin roots his films in a specific milieu, but one so rich in possibilities that his work easily takes on universal relevance.

His "Head-On" (2004) was about a marriage of convenience between two Turkish-Germans —- one a self-destructive alcoholic, the other a nymphomaniac. From that tawdry premise a genuine love story bloomed.

Akin's latest, "The Edge of Heaven," is even better. A multicharacter study of parent-child love, tradition and modernity, rebellion and acceptance, "Heaven" employs a Mobius-strip time frame in which past and present overlap (similar to Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" or Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Babel").

Told in three chapters, Akin's film never goes for cheap effects. Nevertheless, he's created an emotional blockbuster.

In the first segment, the Turkish immigrant Ali (Tuncel Kurtiz) visits a prostitute in his adopted town of Bremen. A widower and retiree, Ali is so taken with the middle-aged hooker, Yeter (Nursel Kose), that he proposes she move in with him.

Yeter, who is also from Turkey, has been getting threats from Muslim activists, and it seems like a good time to get out of the game. She takes Ali up on his offer.

Turns out Ali isn't the kindly old guy he seemed. Age hasn't blunted his Old World machismo. He drinks and he treats Yeter like a servant. He even accuses his son Nejat (Baki Davrak), a decent, soft-spoken professor of German at a Hamburg university, of sleeping with Yeter. And one night in a jealous fit he knocks Yeter to the floor, killing her.

With his father in prison, the conscientious Nejat decides to go to Turkey and find the daughter Yeter hadn't seen in years. There he begins to appreciate his roots, even buying a German-language bookstore in Istanbul.

Act II focuses on Yeter's daughter, Ayten (Nurgul Yesilcay), who is on the run. When Turkish police shatter her terrorist group (Communists?), Ayten flees to Germany. There she becomes the lover of college student Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska) and soon moves in with Lotte and her disapproving mother, Susanne (Hanna Schygulla, the star of several Rainer Werner Fassbinder films in the '70s).

Arrested as an illegal immigrant, Ayten is deported back to Turkey, where she faces a long jail term for her political activities.

Despite her mother's protests, the loyal Lotte follows, using all her resources to get her lover legal help.

This segment ends in yet another senseless act of violence, which sets up the reconciliation (the edge of heaven) of Act III.

Quite unexpectedly, Susanne "adopts" the imprisoned Ayten, a woman of whom she's always been suspicious.

This section belongs to Schygulla, whose plump hausfrau initially seems like a cliche of middle-class attitudes and prejudices.

Here, though, Susanne's circumscribed world opens up. Her desperate need to be a mother to someone —- the foreign Ayten if not her own daughter —- drives "The Edge of Heaven" into emotional territory so intense as to leave us reeling.

What's astonishing about Akin's film is that he doesn't seem to be trying all that hard.

"Heaven" is devoid of showy camera technique. Akin's players don't seem to be acting ... they simply occupy their characters without fuss or overt emoting.

And despite elements that in other hands might be lurid —- violent death, prostitution, a same-sex love affair —- "The Edge of Heaven" never feels melodramatic.

All of which adds up to a transcendent film experience.