AFTER a series of literary cinematic hits — The English Patient, The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain — Anthony Minghella has returned to directing one of his own original screenplays, the first time since Truly Madly Deeply in 1991. Breaking and Entering, a subtle London parable, hinges on a theft and an adultery, and cleverly puts these crimes in the moral balance.

A trendy architect, Will Francis (played by Jude Law, his third role in a Minghella film), begins to doubt the wisdom of moving his practice to King’s Cross when his offices are burgled and stripped of all their expensive computer equipment twice.

Will starts spending nights slouched in a Land Rover staring at his warehouse. It seems slightly preferable to sitting at home with his depressed Swedish partner, Liv (Robin Wright Penn), and their autistic teenage daughter.

When the young thief duly turns up, Will tracks him down to a council flat near Camden, where curiosity gets the better of his judgment. Something about the boy’s exotic mother, Amira (Juliette Binoche), stifles his impulse to call the police.

BACKGROUND

• Breaking and Entering

• Breaking and Entering - Sunday Times review

• Minghella's democratic vision of cinema, but not as we know it

Sultry prima donna

Juliette Binoche does sex scenes only if it’s necessary. This time she says it is

Related Internet Links

• 2007 London Film Festival coverage

• Times Online Film Trailers

Will befriends the vulnerable Bosnian refugee. There is an honesty about her neediness that unexpectedly touches him. Amira eventually invites him inside her flat where he discovers his laptop in her son’s room. He leaves saying nothing. This brief encounter blossoms into an affair fraught with lies and deceptions.

The power of the film lies in the human cost, but it fingers issues about gentrification, displacement and crime that ring all too true in this fractured city. Minghella captures the damage and strains of profound and rapid change quite brilliantly. The images of the urban renewal around King’s Cross are haunting, as are the images of the area’s inherent seediness. The human metaphor that glues the drama together is wonderfully effective.

Jude Law’s architect is the epitome of successful middle-class decency, yet emotionally he is barely alive. Amira is the heart and soul of the film, and Binoche is marvellous in the role. The trauma of the Bosnian conflict is still fresh in her memory, as is the husband who left her in Sarajevo and failed her son. Yet Amira stirs feelings and desires in Will that have not been moved for years. Less convincing is the relationship Minghella erects around Law’ s home life. Wright Penn’s performance as the frigid Liv does not work in English let alone Swedish. And the bizarre behaviour of their daughter, who performs gymnastics day and night, is an annoying distraction. The sheer miser-abilism of this dysfunctional unit stretches patience and credibility.

That said, there are notable touches of comedy elsewhere. Martin Freeman is a shy and bumbling joy as a partner in the architect firm, and Vera Farmiga, fresh from Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, puts in a raucous cameo as an Eastern European hooker who tries to turn tricks with Will in his car. Law is a compelling and convincing presence throughout. His character’s (self) deception is the awkward point of the film, and the actor wears it beautifully.

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010