Soul Kitchen (2009) dir. Fatih Akin
Starring: Adam Bousdoukos, Moritz Bleibtreu, Birol Ünel, Pheline Roggan

***1/2

What a 180 shift for Fatih Akin, the (deserved) winner of the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes 3 years ago for his so very serious contemplative Alejandro González Iñárritu-like international drama, “Edge of Heaven”. “Heaven” was a great film, but so formal, so clever and earnest in its message about forgiveness and empathy, it was on the exhausting side of cinema. Thus, Akin’s new film, a brilliant comical farce set in a down and out German restaurant feels like a film made after sniffing some potent smelling salts.

Zinos Kazantsakis (also co-writer Adam Bousdoukos) is a hapless restauranteur introduced to us serving frozen vegetables, Captain Highliner fish sticks and other uncreative truck-stop foods to his satisfied but uninspired working class clientele. When the public health inspector gives him a bad report card, his beautiful girlfriend decides to move to Shanghai for a journalistic assignment, and he slips a disc in his back, Zinos' world teeters on the edge of collapse. But when he hires a fired primadonna haute cuisine chef Shayne (Birol Ünel) to run the kitchen things start to look up. Shayne’s creativity making chicken fingers look like Fois Gras appears to turn his business around. Suddenly Soul Kitchen becomes a hopping joint with full on DJs, rock bands, and nightclub dancing.

Enter Zinos’s brother, Illias (Moritz Bleibtreu), fresh out of prison on dayleave, who has been given co-power of attorney authority on the property. Illias gambles away the building in a poker game to a bullish real estate investor. Add to the fact that Zinos’ girlfriend has left him for another man in China puts Zinos on near suicide watch. But a number of events, and unplanned coincidences result in a miraculous turnaround of luck throwing Zino back in contention in the restaurant business and with a new girl on the horizon.

Fatih Akin mixes the pace of screwball classics, with a “Raising Arizona’ zaniness, anchored by a real world everyman hero in Zinos. Akin has his running shoes on at all times, never letting us rest in between clever character introductions, brilliantly choreographed food preparation set pieces, and a number of wild energetic musical numbers.

Akin and Bousdoukos's tight screenplay is of the American romantic comedy template variety. But with the fresh German faces, frenetic reckless pace and a willingness to go for every gag it barrels over any Apatow, Sandler, or Ephron comedy over the last few years.

If any film this year were to come close to ‘Slumdog Millionaire’-feeling of exuberance and warm fuzzies upon leaving the theatre it would be “Soul Kitchen”. The final credit sequence doesn’t feature a choreographed Bollywood dance sequence, but the flashy graphic credits set to it ‘It’s Your Thing” by The Isley Brothers comes pretty close.

The Edge of Heaven (2008) dir. Fatih Akin
Starring: Baki Davrak, Nurgul Yesilcay, Tuncel Kurtiz, Patrycia Ziolkowska

****

“The Edge of Heaven” is a mesmerizing tale about a series of characters from Germany and Turkey who meet and interconnect and discover the healing power of forgiveness and empathy. No logline will do the film justice. It’s a brilliant film.

The film opens in Turkey where a man walks into a gas station to buy some fuel. The scene lasts only a few minutes before cutting away to a completely unrelated scene in Germany. We learn the man buying gas in Turkey is Nejat Asku (Baki Davrak), a Turk living in Germany working as a university professor. His father is Ali Asku (Tuncel Kurtiz), who lives out his golden years cruising the Bremen brothels for ‘ladies of easy virtue’. His favourite is a fellow Turk, Yeter (Nursel Koese). Ali is so smitten with Yeter he employs her to be his personal whore to live with him and playact as his wife. Yeter accepts. Nejat is surprisingly understanding of Yeter and Ali’s relationship, and in fact they hit it off very well. Nejat learns that Yeter has a daughter, currently living in Turkey whom she yearns to see again. But before she has a chance to do so, Ali, in a violent rage, accidentally kills Yeter. Nejat is so heartbroken he decides to move to Turkey to find Yeter’s long lost daughter.

The film moves and sways following each character’s point of view over the timeline of the film. Like Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Babel”, or “Amores Perros”, the characters that we are introduced to and get to know intersect with other – sometimes on purpose, sometimes coincidentally - but all in service of the overlying theme of forgiveness. Writer/Director Fatih Akin channels the themes and characters of Kieslowski’s accomplished oeuvre. The religious themes remind me Kieslowski’s “Decalogue”, and his plot structure and characters remind me of “Red, White and Blue.”

Though the plotting is clever it never overwhelms our identification with the characters. It was a joy to see new lead characters introduced later the film. Just when we were enjoying the engrossing lives of Ali and Nejat we are introduced an equally compelling duo – Ayten (Yeter’s daughter) and Lotte. Their relationship is special and also provides us with one of the most sensual on-screen kisses I’ve ever seen. Towards the end we see that same scene in the gas station again, except, knowing the emotional weight of the characters at this point in their lives, the scene takes on a whole new meaning. It’s a great moment.

The tone of the film also reminds me of 2006's Foreign Language Oscar-winner, “The Lives of Others”, though I do miss the final knot-tying wrap-up that film gave us. I felt “The Edge of Heaven” was missing one more scene before the final credits to give me full closure. An American filmmaker would have given us that last scene, but Akin is European, so what can I expect? I won’t hold it against him. It's a near ‘masterpiece’. Enjoy.