THE third time definitely wasn’t the charm for Anthony Minghella, who directed Jude Law to Oscar nominations for “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Cold Mountain.”
For starters, Minghella wasn’t doing Law – whose faithless ways are the stuff of tabloid legend – any favors by casting him as an adulterer in their latest (and utterly failed) Academy bid, the sluggish “Breaking and Entering.”
That’s like asking Lindsay Lohan to play a hard-partying starlet.
And American audiences may find this story about an urban renewal project in London’s scruffy Kings Cross section a tad parochial.
It’s the first film Minghella has written since his debut, 1991’s “Truly, Madly, Deeply,” as well as his most intimate production since the infamously overrated “The English Patient” turned him into the Weinsteins’ version of David Lean.
This time, the ubiquitous Law is Will, an idealistic landscape architect who spends an awful lot of nights on the job in his new Kings Cross office. It’s possibly to escape his stereotypically frigid Swedish girlfriend (a bizarrely cast Robin Wright Penn) and her 13-year-old autistic daughter (Poppy Rogers).
He is also trying to catch a burglar who keeps breaking into his firm’s office, at one point making off with his laptop.
Staking out the place at night, Will ultimately spots Miro (Rafi Gavron), a 15-year-old Bosnian refugee who effortlessly climbs onto the roof.
But instead of turning Miro in to the cops (in the form of Ray Winstone), Will follows Miro to his apartment, which he shares with his mother, Amira (Juliette Binoche), who mends clothes for a living.
Will and Amira soon begin having an affair. When she learns of Miro’s guilt, she blackmails Will to secure his silence – though it’s hardly necessary, since Will is charmed that Miro has an interest in architecture.
Though Binoche does very solid work, she can’t sell the idea of her and Law as a couple; the chemistry isn’t there. Not much else rings true in Minghella’s screenplay, which is full of coincidences and speeches about race and class.
The best thing about “Breaking and Entering” is Vera Farmiga (“The Departed”), who is delightful as a Russian prostitute who works out of Will’s Range Rover. Unfortunately, she has almost nothing to do with the rest of the movie.
BREAKING AND ENTERING
Petty larceny.
Running time: 116 minutes. Rated R (sex, profanity). At the Paris and the Sunshine.