The dangers of indulging in a little dramatic movie like this every now and again is that too often, you get burnt. But before you start, let me state that this film does have several reasons that make it stand out from the crowd. Director Anthony Minghella knows how to shoot a film, thesps like Jude Law and Juilette Binoche have both experience and reputations to draw on and people like me still get a rush of blood thinking about Underworld's work for the soundtrack to "Trainspotting". It would be a rare day indeed if this sort of pedigree were wasted in some sort of plodding, unrealistic time-waster but alas, today is that day. Despite me ignoring my first impressions and sticking with it, this is one of those films where characters mumble lines of dialogue you'd never hear in real life and very little plot development makes any sort of sense.
Throwing himself into his work redeveloping the area around Kings Cross, architect Will (Law) struggles to cope at home with his half-Swedish girlfriend Liv (Robin Wright-Penn) and her semi-autistic gymnast daughter Beatrice (Poppy Rogers). After a break-in at his office, Will eventually finds the culprit - a fifteen year-old teenager from Sarejevo called Miro (Rafi Gavron) - and follows him home where he becomes enchanted by Milo's mother Amira (Binoche). As Will and Amira start seeing each other, Will begins to question his life while Amira slowly discovers what her son has been doing behind her back...
Like I said, there are things to recommend about "Breaking And Entering" and for me, the acting is the first noticeable plus. Binoche, Law and Wright-Penn are excellent as are most of the supporting cast, especially Rogers and Martin Freeman as Will's partner Sandy. The only fly in the ointment is Ray Winstone's horribly stereotyped cop investigating the break-in, who always feels like he's two seconds away from rolling over his car's bonnet and driving at high speed through some cardboard boxes. Other positives are Minghella's direction which gives the film a suitably urban feel to match the seediness of Kings Cross perfectly and the soundtrack by Underworld is just brilliant, without being intrusive. The ingredients were there but the film's leisurely pace and frankly odd story undermines all that hard work. Take the fact that Will & Sandy, instead of hiring security to look after their office, decide to spend the night in their car staking the place out but end up being bothered by prostitutes. The dialogue is also pretty poor - Law's character, who seems to spend an abnormally large amount of time staring into the middle-distance, delivers lines of such cryptic complexity that I had no idea what he was on about half the time.
In some ways, it reminded me of Binoche's English-speaking debut "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" which is beautifully acted and directed but spend the entire duration going absolutely nowhere and ultimately ended up being a very pretty but dull film. "Breaking And Entering" suffers from similar problems, being far too pretentious and not nearly believable enough for me to care. In fact, Will's generally unlikeable nature put me off just as much and other than his good looks and the need to protect her son, I couldn't see what attracted Amira to him in the first place. I'm a great admirer of Binoche (in every respect) but this film doesn't really do much for her CV. "Breaking And Entering" might offer something for viewers used to dramas such as this but personally, I just wanted something to happen or quite honestly, for the film to abandon Will and follow Winstone's heavily-clichéd copper for a few hours while he cracked some heads down in the East End. Instead, the film stuck with a bunch of boring people doing not very much while I wondered how so many talented people could simultaneously have an off-day.
Throwing himself into his work redeveloping the area around Kings Cross, architect Will (Law) struggles to cope at home with his half-Swedish girlfriend Liv (Robin Wright-Penn) and her semi-autistic gymnast daughter Beatrice (Poppy Rogers). After a break-in at his office, Will eventually finds the culprit - a fifteen year-old teenager from Sarejevo called Miro (Rafi Gavron) - and follows him home where he becomes enchanted by Milo's mother Amira (Binoche). As Will and Amira start seeing each other, Will begins to question his life while Amira slowly discovers what her son has been doing behind her back...
Like I said, there are things to recommend about "Breaking And Entering" and for me, the acting is the first noticeable plus. Binoche, Law and Wright-Penn are excellent as are most of the supporting cast, especially Rogers and Martin Freeman as Will's partner Sandy. The only fly in the ointment is Ray Winstone's horribly stereotyped cop investigating the break-in, who always feels like he's two seconds away from rolling over his car's bonnet and driving at high speed through some cardboard boxes. Other positives are Minghella's direction which gives the film a suitably urban feel to match the seediness of Kings Cross perfectly and the soundtrack by Underworld is just brilliant, without being intrusive. The ingredients were there but the film's leisurely pace and frankly odd story undermines all that hard work. Take the fact that Will & Sandy, instead of hiring security to look after their office, decide to spend the night in their car staking the place out but end up being bothered by prostitutes. The dialogue is also pretty poor - Law's character, who seems to spend an abnormally large amount of time staring into the middle-distance, delivers lines of such cryptic complexity that I had no idea what he was on about half the time.
In some ways, it reminded me of Binoche's English-speaking debut "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" which is beautifully acted and directed but spend the entire duration going absolutely nowhere and ultimately ended up being a very pretty but dull film. "Breaking And Entering" suffers from similar problems, being far too pretentious and not nearly believable enough for me to care. In fact, Will's generally unlikeable nature put me off just as much and other than his good looks and the need to protect her son, I couldn't see what attracted Amira to him in the first place. I'm a great admirer of Binoche (in every respect) but this film doesn't really do much for her CV. "Breaking And Entering" might offer something for viewers used to dramas such as this but personally, I just wanted something to happen or quite honestly, for the film to abandon Will and follow Winstone's heavily-clichéd copper for a few hours while he cracked some heads down in the East End. Instead, the film stuck with a bunch of boring people doing not very much while I wondered how so many talented people could simultaneously have an off-day.