This class warfare drama feels contrived and superficial: characters don't act logically as the movie manipulates them towards deconstructing various social issues.
This class warfare drama feels contrived and superficial: characters don't act logically as the movie manipulates them towards deconstructing various social issues.
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Average Rating: 3.2/5
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A petty thief is the link between a well-to-do businessman and a single mother struggling to get by in his edgy, emotional drama. Will Francis (Jude Law) is a successful landscape architect who runs an upscale business with his friend Sandy (Martin Freeman) in the King's Cross section of London, a neighborhood that has long been plagued by crime and poverty but has lately become the target of a major gentrification program. Will's longtime girlfriend is Liv (Robin Wright Penn), a lovely woman
troubled by a lack of communication between herself and her husband and emotional problems with their teenage daughter, Bea (Poppy Rogers), who can't sleep and is obsessed with gymnastics. A thief has broken into Will and Sandy's office not once but twice, taking Will's laptop and the company's computer equipment, and Will begins spending his evenings at the shop in hopes of catching the culprit in action. The burglar strikes a third time, and while giving chase, Will sees him make his way into a shabby apartment building. Will learns the criminal is Miro (Rafi Gavron), a 15-year-old refugee from Bosnia. Without revealing what he knows, Will makes the acquaintance of Amira (Juliette Binoche), Miro's widowed mother -- a Bosnian refugee who makes a living as a seamstress. As Will starts bringing Amira business on a regular basis, the two begin an affair which continues even as Will maintains his relationship with Liv. Breaking and Entering was written and directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Anthony Minghella; it was his first project made from his own original script since Truly, Madly, Deeply in 1991. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
The complicated interactions involving class and culture that ensue between all these characters remain fascinating even when they seem overly schematic.
Though Binoche does very solid work, she can't sell the idea of her and Law as a couple; the chemistry isn't there. Not much else rings true in Minghella's screenplay, which is full of coincidences and speeches about race and class.
Breaking and Entering offers a kinder, gentler version of London's strife than we're accustomed to seeing. Not all parts of the script are equally well-developed, and sometimes it seems as if we're looking at drama under glass.
As with all of Minghella's films, there's intelligence and texture and depth and feeling, though here the emotions can seem frostbitten. Perhaps the first thing that wasn't working and needed to be fully broken to heal was the script.
Maybe Jude Law should take some time off from acting. Maybe Juliette Binoche should get a new dialect coach. Maybe Anthony Minghella should try writing a movie ending that doesn't make everybody groan.
Though intricately plotted and well acted, Minghella's characters feel more like symbols than flesh-and-blood characters, and their travails seem designed to illustrate a lecture about privilege, injustice, cultural stereotypes and bourgeois complacency.
Everything in Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering is torn and in need of mending....And like the flaw's set within the confines of the film, the movie itself is in need of a little tinkering itself.
... takes place in a metaphorical world of stunningly beautiful people where every human failing and dramatic action reverberates with symbolic significance.
Un drama urbano muy contemporáneo que explora superficialmente ciertas realidades sociales, pero que presta más atención a las crisis domésticas de sus personajes. Podría haber sido mucho más interesante.
Minghella has to do with a very undefined and illogical screenplay that makes it all feel distant and the director still manages to bring to the screen some very nice and emotional moments. This is not a disaster, but surely could have been without Minghella's sensitive touch and the good cast.
There was just too much going on to know what was the REAL story being told. The build up is way too slow because where the movie ends, to me, is where the story really had potential. To me the "thief" is the story, but it is lost with all the unnecessary scenes in bathtubs! Does it require acting for Jude Law to
portray a man incapable of monogamy? lol
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