Breaking and Entering

Anthony Minghella's heartfelt and heavy-handed drama about cultural and class divisions and urban isolation is ostensibly set in North London but really takes place in a metaphorical world of stunningly beautiful people where every human failing and dramatic action reverberates with symbolic significance. Jude Law is the affluent architect with a liberal cause and a guilty conscience, Robin Wright Penn his increasingly remote wife and Juliette Binoche a widowed Bosnian refugee whose son is a good kid lured into petty crime by a thug of an uncle. The kid's crimes end up pulling the group of disparate Londoners (which also includes Martin Freeman as Law's sardonic partner, who is in love with their immigrant office cleaner, and Vera Farmiga as a tartly funny Russian hooker) into a melting pot of suspicion and mendacity. It's all very tasteful and tidy for a portrait of the messiness of human emotions and the inability (or refusal) to really communicate, elegantly executed if not particularly compelling (or even convincing). The disc features commentary by writer/director Anthony Minghella, deleted scenes and a featurette.