CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 12/15/06

Crimes of the Art

By james napoli

Breaking and Entering

Anthony Minghella (also directed)

A writer friend once got a memorable brush-off from an executive, who passed on his work by gushing, "I love what you're trying to do." It is not surprising that this phrase should come to mind while viewing the latest from Anthony Minghella, his first original screenplay since Truly, Madly, Deeply debuted in 1991. Minghella is a smart writer, adept, especially in adaptations (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley), at going after wrenching emotion while maintaining a distance that allows us to grasp the ideas that fascinate him: the personal as political, problematic love, and alienation. Here, though, characters behaving unrealistically to advance a contrived story overstate these notions. Jude Law plays Will, an architect revitalizing King's Cross, a dodgy area of London. When a teenage burglar (Rafi Gavron) ransacks his office on orders from a Serbian syndicate, Will's attempt to catch him leads to an affair with his Muslim refugee mother (Juliette Binoche), and threatens to collapse his relationship to the depressive Swede Liv (Robin Wright Penn). The couple's struggle with Liv's possibly autistic daughter (Poppy Rogers) provides the film's most authentic moments, but Minghella's poorly conceived street crime plot leaves his sensibilities completely at sea, to the point where major thematic points are actually relayed by a sassy crack whore (Vera Farmiga). Sadly, there is nothing much at stake here, and the drama is mostly manufactured, as though the characters have worked through their problems by hiring a screenwriter. Minghella is talented enough that we can absorb the film's message (we all commit crimes in the name of various kinds of love), but in the end, we can only appreciate what he is trying to do.

Breaking and Entering
The Weinstein Company
Rated R; 120 min.

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James Napoli has a Masters Degree from the London International Film School, wrote and directed two award-winning short films, teaches a creative writing class for screenwriters, and is the head writer of live original radio plays for XM Satellite Radio's New Frequency.

Breaking and Entering courtesy The Weinstein Company

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