Film Reviews

Breaking and Entering

• Rating:
• Director: Anthony Minghella
• Starring: Jude Law
• Details: UK / 120mins (16).

Staring: Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright-Penn, Ray Winstone.

Successful architect Will Francis (Law) is the middle of a personal crisis: his Swedish-American wife Liv (Wright-Penn) is becoming increasingly distant and her autistic daughter Bea (Poppy Rogers) is proving more than a handful. His work life isn't going swimmingly either as his elegant King's Cross office is repeatedly broken into. Determined to catch the thieves, Will stakes out the office and spots Bosnian immigrant Miro (Rafi Gavron) in the act of breaking in. Following him home, Will sees and falls for his mother Amira (Binoche) and, instead of reporting her son to the police, embarks on an affair with her. Breaking and Entering's low-key tone is fine for an hour, but once the melodramatics kick in, Minghella loses the run of himself and seems unsure where to take his film. The plot takes an age to get going and feels like a lot of thought (beautifully executed by the way) went into the set up; however, Breaking And Entering unravels after that, and a lack focus takes over. Sub-plots that don't go anywhere and supporting characters with no real purpose appear and disappear like they were prominent in an early draft but got smothered under excessive rewriting, and Winstone's good-natured cop, Martin Freeman's lawyer and Vera Farmiga's Romanian hooker aren't essential to the film and wouldn't be missed after a quick editing session. The acting is the only consistent element. Law does the job asked of him without really breaking sweat, Wright-Penn shows again that she is criminally underused and Binoche, always flawless, gives the film the grounding it needs.

Review by Gavin Burke