Leonor Watling as Elvira has trouble accepting her mother’s new relationship — with
a woman — in a lively new Spanish comedy.
‘The Edge of Heaven’ is complex but never contrived.
Director Gregg Araki says the raw, punk-rock energy of his controversial ‘The Living End’ holds up. The hot factor hasn’t faded either.
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By Rachel Kramer Bussel
Friday, May 21, 2004
This debut feature film by Spanish directors Ines Paris and Daniela Fejerman
is a family comedy with a twist.
We’re used to watching children come out to their parents, but parents
coming out to their children? That’s a lot rarer — and even more
fraught with anxiety.
When Sofia (Rosa Maria Sarda), a divorced women in her 50s, gathers her three
daughters together to introduce them to the new love of her life, they’re
excited for her until they discover this new love is a woman, Eliska, not much
older than they are. Although the pair are as unassuming as can be (forget
any rainbow flags or other queer signifiers), the daughters collectively treat
this as a problem to be solved and quickly embark on plans to split the two
up.
Sol (Silvia Abascal) is a Lili Taylor-lookalike who fronts a rock band, full
of perky, youthful energy and the desire to shake things up. She shows off
her liberalism by penning an arousing song about her mother’s sex life,
which she debuts at a crowded concert to the distinct dismay of her family.
So over-the-top is her enthusiasm that we suspect that underneath her bravado
lurks uncertainty as well.
Jimena (Maria Pujalte), the only married daughter, is overtly uncomfortable
with Eliska’s presence, but it’s Elvira (Leonor Watling), the sensitive
young writer, who is most troubled by her mother’s sexuality. She confronts
her therapist with the concern that she herself might be a lesbian.
Pujalte adeptly captures the uncertainty of sexual confusion, compounded by
her idea that she’s inherited her mother’s gayness.
The question of the daughter’s sexuality doesn’t get fully answered
until the end of the film. But meanwhile, it imbues her moments of doubt with
an emotional honesty that stands out even amidst the three daughters’ madcap
capers.
Although she is the title character, Sofia’s role is minimal compared
to her daughters’ quest to puzzle out their mother’s new identity.
Neither their father, nor friends, nor coworkers evince the same dark concerns.
Yet each daughter comes to see Eliska’s appearance as a personal affront.
One of the most amusing scenes involves a trip to a dyke bar, where the trio
hatch their plan to find a woman to seduce Eliska away from Sofia. As the camera
pans around the bar, we see our world from the eyes of outsiders, the clichés
of butch toughness and lesbian recruitment played up to the max.
In a spin worthy of Almódovar, they quickly try to assimilate themselves
into the very community they want to shun their mother from. The women at the
bar flirt with the daughters, who are both flattered and repelled simultaneously.
After a fumbling, failed attempt by Sol to tempt Eliska, they nominate Elvira
to be the “other woman.”
Elvira’s seduction scene turns poignant when she finds herself actually
having fun, no longer plotting revenge but perhaps seeing a little of what
her mother sees in the easygoing kindhearted young woman.
The action never lets up, as the women uproot their own lives to try to get
back the mother they know and love. They see that Sofia’s still the same
woman she’s always been, just more true to herself.
Paris and Fejerman play up the havoc supposedly wreaked on their lives versus
the calm, quiet, almost incidentally lesbian, life Sofia and Eliska create
together.
So powerful is their fear of what others will think and the “shame” this
will bring that it causes them dramatic meltdowns and emotional freakouts.
There’s plenty of comic relief as they try — unsuccessfully — to
paint Eliska as a villain. Their overly dramatic crisis mode contrasts with
their mother’s studied calmness.
This fast-paced comedy will make you laugh, but also has plenty of heart behind
it. The most well-intentioned family members can become unnerved when a formerly
straight mom suddenly declares herself a dyke — even when she does so
with the utmost grace and ease.
The joke here is that the younger, supposedly liberal, generation is the one
having trouble adjusting to modern life. Their mother makes them confront their
own stereotypes.
The fact that they do so while getting mixed up in plenty of madcap mayhem
along the way makes this film a delight.
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