Blue Heaven

Running time: N/A

Blue Heaven exists on the border between the city and the country, between urban sprawl and rural purity, and three generations of women struggle to maintain some balance in their lives on that edge. Czech director Eva Borusovicova's first feature is a poetic film, a tragicomedy about a mother, daughter, and grandmother forced by circumstance and tenuous relationships into living and coping together. Out of a sincere effort to help one another, they struggle to understand and accept each other's failings. Unfortunately, they're not always able to. The mother's bitterness boils beneath the surface at a husband who's left her alone to face losing her home. The daughter resents her mother's failed marriage but too late realizes her own bad choices in men. But the grandmother is a breath of fresh air, dispensing her wisdom and sharing her stories of her husband. Their apparently peaceful existence is constantly disrupted by the men who come and go in their lives. Through it all, gentle, dreamlike scenes are blended in an effective way with the harshness, and sometimes the humor, of failed relationships. --Jeffrey Vargas