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When two young landscape architects decide to take a chance on building up the crime-ridden King’s Cross neighborhood in London, things don’t go exactly as planned. And when their architectural firm’s office becomes the target of a string of break-ins, life for Will (Jude Law), one of the partners, is thrown into a spin. As he struggles with problems in his ten-year relationship with his girlfriend, Liv (Robin Wright Penn), and her eleven-year-old daughter, Beatrice (Poppy Rogers), Will finds himself on the outside of their family relationship. Instead of dedicating his extra time to staying home and working on his family relationships, though, he dedicates every spare minute to tracking the person responsible for the break-ins. And, in the process, he ends up looking for love anywhere but at home.
Will’s search for the office thief leads him first to a friendship with a local prostitute, Oana (Vera Farmiga), who takes the time to sit and talk to him over coffee while she warms up in his car. Then it leads him to the door of Amira (Juliette Binoche), a tailor from Sarajevo, who’s trying to raise her son, Miro (Rafi Gavron), without a father—and with only the male influence of the boy’s uncle, who gets Miro to skip school and help him break into office buildings. Though Will knows that Miro is involved in the break-ins, he builds a friendship with Amira that eventually turns into an affair.
Breaking and Entering features a talented cast giving impressive performances while playing an ensemble of fascinating characters. Unfortunately, however, the fascinating characters don’t really come together as anything especially fascinating. The relationships between mothers and children (Liv and Beatrice, as well as Amira and Miro) are touching. In fact, all of the female characters—the child with disabilities and her devoted mother, the hard-working mother who just wants to give her son a good life, and even the brash prostitute—are wonderful characters. But as soon as Will enters the picture, things seem to fall apart. Law’s performance is notable, but his character just isn’t likeable—and it’s difficult to understand his motivation or care about what happens to him.
Unfortunately, Breaking and Entering’s story just isn’t able to live up to its characters. Though I made it all the way to the rather perplexing ending, my brother-in-law, who was watching with me, gave up about halfway through and slept through the rest—and I can’t blame him one bit.
