| BREAKING AND ENTERING |
 2006 - UK / USADirector: Anthony Minghella
- Reviewed by Linda
Will is an extremely attractive architect with an extremely attractive girlfriend named Liv (Robin Wright Penn) who's also happens to be blonde and Swedish (bonus points for any red-blooded man!). They've been together ten years, which seems fine for him, but maybe is not enough for her, despite the fact that they have raised her 13-year-old daughter Bea together. Liv is blue. So blue that she constantly basks in the rays of a lamp that she hopes will help her with her seasonal affectiveness disorder (one of the downsides of being Scandinavian). Will and Liv are distant with each other. He pretends his emotional distance is because he is constantly busy with his work where they have just opened their new warehouse-y office in a sketchy part of London, King's Cross. Breaking and Entering gradually introduces us to its other main characters. There's a Muslim immigrant teen (Rafi Gavron), born in Sarajevo, but raised in London. Miro's become a bit of a hoodlum, hanging with a gang of immigrants that have special skills to break into buildings... buildings just like Will's. He goes home to his saintly and downtrodden single mother Amira (Juliette Binoche), who works as a seamstress out of their slummy apartment building. She worries about her son. Miro doesn't go to school. He hangs with a bad crowd. He comes home with electronics (stolen) that she knows they can't afford. The characters all ending up overlapping, as Will discovers who keeps breaking into his building, leading him to his own weird spy mission to find out where the kid is from... which then leads him to (for some reason) pursue Amira.... Worlds eventually collide, and all these depressed Londoners are suddenly exposed to each other for who they really are. Breaking and Entering is an odd film. The characters tend to be so moody, dour, and bleak—so much so that it seems everyone in London must always on the verge of slitting their wrists. Will, for instance, seemingly has a nice life, but is still restless and cranky. His actions first seem to come across as curiosity-propelled, but his motives slowly become something more predatory. It is a bit unclear if director Anthony Minghella is trying to get the audience to sympathize with Will's predicament, or what. I would be very curious to hear a man's perspective of this movie after the closing credits. As a woman, however, I often went "Ew" and wanted to slap Will upside the head. Those negatives aside, what Breaking and Entering has going for it is a stellar cast that, if anything, is enough reason to see the film. How can you not continue to pay attention when it is Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, and Robin Wright Penn sparring with each other on screen? Even side characters, like the hoot-worthy Vera Farmiga as a friendly prostitute and Martin Freeman as Will's earnest business partner, make their roles memorable. It may not be a pick-me-up film—or, worse yet, a date movie—and it does run about half an hour too long. But with its wonderful cast you don't quite feel like simply giving up on these folks—you'll want to stick with them to see how their individual predicaments resolve. |
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I don't think that Jude Law should necessarily be choosing movie roles where he plays an adulterous cad. Maybe he is a good actor, or maybe he is simply good at playing himself, but Breaking and Entering's adulterous Jude (aka Will) is portrayed as having depth and kindness, and more than a little love for his woman and child at home. But that still doesn't stop him from pursuing another woman—seemingly out of curiosity and maybe a little bit of pity. Maybe he thought that this film would explain why a man would do such a thing, but it just made my friend yell at the screen, "He just needs to make a decision!"
