It has been 16 years since the release of Truly Madly Deeply, written and directed by noted British filmmaker Anthony Minghella.
Given the pedigree of that script and the exquisite performances of actors Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson, anticipation was high for Minghella's first script since then, Breaking and Entering.
Sadly, Minghella's latest adult drama disappoints on almost all fronts. And Minghella had a promising and, it must be said, impossibly beautiful cast to work with: leads Jude Law, Robin Wright Penn and Juliette Binoche, and supporting actors Martin Freeman, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga and Juliet Stevenson.
Law plays a successful landscape architect who has just opened cool-looking offices in a dodgy part of North London known as King's Cross.
Despite a solid career and impressive financial status -- he drives a Range Rover and lives in a beautiful house with a back garden frequented by a fox -- his home life is suffering.
His depressed and distant Swedish common-law wife of 10 years (Robin Wright Penn) is neglecting both him and her award-winning documentary career to care for her needy 13-year-old daughter, who may or may not be autistic.
The girl (Poppy Rogers) doesn't sleep, doesn't eat, performs gymnastics at all hours of the night, hordes batteries for some reason and is highly emotional.
This unhappy equation is further complicated by the fact that Law's new offices are a major target for a group of Bosnian thieves who sell computers to Law's company and then steal them back, repeatedly.
The person doing the actual breaking and entering, if you will, is a young, athletic 15-year-old Bosnian boy (Rafi Gavron, currently playing an assassin in TV's Rome) whose sad-sack mother (Juliette Binoche) makes a meagre living as a seamstress.
Naturally, because this is a movie and not real life, Law begins staking out his own offices at night in an attempt to catch the thief in action, but he winds up meeting a philosophic hooker with a heart of gold (Farmiga). I'm not making this up. Thankfully, an unrecognizable but great Farmiga rises above the material.
Eventually, the young Bosnian burglar is caught in the act by Law who, instead of calling the cops, follows him home, where he meets Binoche.
This sets up the love triangle part of the movie.
With all these unbelievable situations, the too-articulate-for-its-own-good dialogue, the dragging pace and the lack of chemistry between Law and Binoche, a viewer doesn't care how this mess all turns out.
Instead, it's Wright Penn who delivers the film's most quietly powerful performance -- despite her wandering British, Irish and American accents.
Among the good supporting cast, the scene-stealing Winstone (Sexy Beast) is barely in the movie but makes a lasting impression as a street-wise cop.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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