A story of thievery and a torrid love affair, it takes a capable filmmaker and a skilled cast and locks them up in a holding cell of pretense.

Despite its title, Breaking and Entering doesn't crack these characters and doesn't let us see inside them...

Deserves to be celebrated as a work that comes closer than any other to achieving what the filmmaker does best: Reminding us that no matter what is happening on a larger scale, we are defined by our interpersonal relationships.

A restrained, low-key chamber piece about immigration and gentrification, and the emotional quicksand associated with marital betrayal.

The events that unfold never feel completely authentic. And its optimistic message of forgiveness feels too pat, as one character jokes in another context, to be contagious.

There isn't an honest human moment in the whole movie.

This is a smart, elegant, sophisticated film that should be everything I want to see in a movie and yet fails to be because it's missing that one enigmatic element, the hardest to capture, the most unfakeable: spirit.

Since the movie is about mending class differences, Minghella manufactures a hopeful ending that wants to have it all--just as he wants his London to have it all--but which instead only rings false.

Minghella's screenplay may be a little too ambitious; it's overstuffed with plot and characters.