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Set in London’s changing cultures, Breaking and Entering is about a series of criminal and emotional thefts but highlighting most of all the scars of immigration. Will (Jude Law) and Sandy (Martin Freeman) run a flourishing landscape architecture firm relocated in the urban decaying King’s Cross area and they are troubled by a series of break-ins by the local thieving gangs. Will lives with his beautiful Swiss girlfriend Liv (Robin Wright Penn) and their 13-year-old daughter Bea (Poppy Roger) who at times spends sleepless nights because of her dancing classes. All seems well till Will runs into a Bosnian refugee family where Miro (Rafi Gavron), one of the break-in suspects, lives with his mother Amira (Juliette Binoche). In order to save her son from prison, she tries to blackmail Will. One of the early lines in the film says, "I’ve never seen an ugly Swiss woman." Later we see the relevance, for Liv is Swiss and their problems are of affluence whereas the Bosnians problems are those of survival. It’s how the other half of the world lives. But as in the recent Spanish film The Education of a Fairy, it shows the women stronger and more in control of sex than the men. It seems to be a new trend. British director Anthony Minghella, whose The English Patient made waves in the mid-1980s, does well to bring out the cultural differences between the haves and the have-nots. The establishing shots are strong but in the latter half he seems to linger needlessly on romantic liaisons. He even runs out of ideas and the ending is somewhat contrived but the strength of the film is the thin line that divides the two communities. Juliette Binoche, who has a reputation for her sexy sequences, has a more cerebral part here and she rightly brings out the plight of an immigrant while Robin Wright Penn is more decorative but it is Jude Law who once again proves his versatility with a stirring portrayal of a man trying to look for some meaning to his life. This comes across clearly when one is later told that Bea isn’t his daughter. Minghella’s style is
distinctive but he becomes kind of confused in the last quarter and
then to make matters worse the ending too is not convincing. But
despite this flaw, Breaking and Entering (don’t miss the
sexual metaphor) has much to offer and will do much to create a better
understanding among communities. Well worth seeing.
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