Breaking 038; Entering

This is a story about Will Law and Liv Wright Penn. Both good-looking and talented, they love each other but no longer know how to find it within their relationship. Their ties strained by work and a beautiful daughter8212;hers, as she says repeatedly, not his8212;who has a sleep disorder that keeps her awake and restless all day and night, they are growing distant from each other.

On the other end of the spectrum there is another couple, a mother, Amira, Binoche and her son Miro Gavron. They are Bosnian refugees, struggling to make ends meet, with the son initiated into petty theft by his relatives. Here again there are secrets, with the mother too afraid to put into words what she knows her son is up to all those hours he is away from home and school.

Their lives cross when Miro breaks and enters twice into the new office of Will and his partner, carrying away all their computers. Will is no mean architect, working on a project to transform London8217;s underbelly, King8217;s Cross, by changing the spaces inhabited by its people. Angry at the thefts, Will and his partner start keeping a nightly vigil outside their office.

It is then that Will8217;s 8220;happy enough8221; life8212;by his own admission an existence where truths are best left unspoken in order not to jerk what all parties realise is a precarious pendulum8212;gets shaken and stirred. For the first time, he comes face to face with the underbelly he is trying, again in his own words, to apply lipstick to, or to make pretty, and he is forced to examine his life.

Will feels unwanted by Liv, despite the fact that he loves her daughter as his own and despite the fact that she knows it too. He tries talking to her but she has put herself behind a glass wall. Having followed Miro home one day, Will finds himself drawn towards Amira. Where Liv keeps all her feelings bottled up inside, Will finds he can talk to Amira8212;from a distant culture and background, though with the same worries as a mother.

Minghella, always a director of films which move at their own pace English Patient, Cold Mountain, tells the story of Will and Liv8217;s life languorously. Sometimes too languorously. Breaking and Entering threatens to get boring in parts, Minghella has an apology of an explanation on Bosnia, and the director piles on contrasts, metaphors and cliches, including a golden-hearted prostitute who drops in and out for no apparent reason. So scared is Minghella apparently of leaving anything nothing to the viewers8217; imagination that even the two children in the film are both enthusiastic gymnasts what are the odds of that?.

But at a time when films just rush past, you are thankful for Breaking and Entering, written by Minghella, to let Will be. He is middle-aged, boring, repetitive and uncertain and what8217;s strange about that? An old hand with Minghella, Law knows what is wanted of his character. Cutting through all the clutter, he is equally good as an uncertain companion, father and lover, making the film worthwhile.