We went to see Breaking and Entering yesterday. Sometimes, you can go into a film having already decided that you don't like it, and the opposite is true also. I'd made up my mind that the new Minghella was going to be one of the best films of the last five years. I'd heard him speak about the film on Radio 5 - he's a very articulate and engaging man, so talked eloquently about it. Kermode also gave favourable sqwarks.
From the opening shots, it is clear this is an affectionate portrait of London; not a picture postcard view, but one which (North) Londoners are more likely to recognise daily.
Framed by the robbery of an Architect's new premises in King's Cross, the film centres primarily around the crumbling marriage of Jude Law and Robin Wright Penn. The couple try - in a fumbling and hurtful manner - to figure out when they stopped looking at each other; when they became so immune to each other's presence. Jude Law eventually becomes engaged in an affair with the mother (Juliet Binoche) of one of the robbers of the his company's building.
What is impressive about the tone of the film is how it conveys Jude Law's inevitable slide into infidelity. When he confesses to his wife about the affair, he claims he didn't plan it, and this could be true, but you see how he contrives the affair, perhaps not completely concious of his actions, in something of a dream-state, but it's not an accident how he brings about the situation. He floats into it, and this is brlliantly acted and written. We were talking afterwards about how annoying Jude Law is to watch - his smug style of acting - and concluded that having seen him perform like this on numerous occasions, it isn't unfair to suggest that this is a large part of his personality coming through. Or that it comes quite naturally to him. But whether that's true or not (that he's a bit of a tit), it's incredibly effective in portraying someone who's ego has sent him spiralling into a disaster of moral ambiguity - the ambiguity being his own clouded thoughts. He has lost the thread of what he really wants or what he really feels - common for most men I think - and he says he was 'looking for love' but he can't really grasp how he has ended up in this fog. 'Why were you looking for love?' his parnter rightfully asks.
The other key relationship in the film - Juliet Binoche and her son - is also brilliantly pitched.
Coming out of the film, you may not feel much resolution; there's no sense of conclusive satisfation, whether sad or happy. Some films may end on a downer, but at least there's a clear conclusion - this doesn't have that. I think this sense of unsteadiness is executed in the scene near the end when unexpectedly, Robin Wright Penn flips at Jude Law and runs away from him. THe natural arc of story is broken with this scene and it may look a little stilted or uncomfortable, but in portraying the jumpiness of her feelings and their fragile relationship, this pulse of sudden hurt emotion is a necessary jolt to the trajectory of the film's conclusion.
