a celebration of the obvious

man, worried, in a cab

Last week I saw Anthony Minghella's new hymn to middle-class angst, Breaking and Entering. There's more to say about this film than I have time for, and possibly more than it deserves. So, after a nod to the great look of the thing - and why shouldn't it look great, Minghella has a fine eye for texture and has (under-)used some prime London locations - I'll move right along to the point.

(Yawn.)

My suspicion is that Minghella's heart (he's admitted in interviews that he's driven by the heart, not the head, which accounts for sloppy, cosy choices made throughout this film) may well be in the right place, as the film seeks to remind us that 'everybody isn't like us, you know, and some of them are actually quite cultured'. Hence the thieving boy who wants to be an architect, the gangster who doesn't lay a hand on him when he gets them caught, the brave Bosnian mum who plays her piano on a practice keyboard, the knock-em-dead-glammy prozzie who not only has a heart of gold but also (brilliant stroke!) pays for the cappuccino... and returns Jude Law's car with a fox puppet in it, after she's stolen (sorry, I mean borrowed) it. (The puppet is an in-joke: she's telling him to get in touch with his "wild" side. Of which she herself is an exponent. It's not exactly War and Peace, is it.)

The signifiers in this film were scarily blunt: the African cleaner suddenly, following a segue that practically doesn't exist, blurts out: "This is just like Kafka!" (And no it isn't; she's just showing off.) And there's a shot of the overcrowded (but quite tasteful) council flat occupied by Juliette Binoche - in the Brunswick Centre, an estate so lauded in architectural and design circles that it's the last place a real refugee could hope to be housed - which suddenly glances over a hefty biography of Stravinsky, sitting on a table. Um - twice. Once we see it, then it shows us Jude Law seeing it. The point must be that we, the viewer, are supposed to be surprised to see it, thus exposing our prejudices. Unfortunately for Minghella, as we the viewer have no particular prejudices in this regard, having carted lorry-loads of highbrow books from overcrowded flat to overcrowded flat for years, it only exposes his.

Of course we all know that London for different people, for different groups of people, is different cities. Jude Law's character (or anti-character, so bland is he) thinks it's merely arty to have an office in a warehouse by a broken fence down an alleyway behind Kings Cross station, and never realises that his skylights could be part of the problem. Is there really anyone in London as gormless as this? He trusts everyone. And although he is clearly very worried (see pic above), nothing really impinges on his comfort, material or emotional. This sounds fine, as characterisation, but there are worrying signs that the characterisation is in fact of Minghella.

Jude Law's character can well afford to be generous. The film is much more generous to him than to Binoche's character - notwithstanding her plucky bravery and European nobility of spirit. Near the end, his complacent mistreatment of her (on Stock Location Number Five, the top of Parliament Hill: a great place for a secret rendezvous!) becomes the most shocking thing in the film (because so believable and, frankly, so typical) - and his subsequent last-minute decision not actually to destroy her life along with her son's is portrayed as somehow heroic, generous, wonderful, rather than merely putting him back in the human race.

Of course it's all very sad, really: the Bosnian mother and son disappear without a word, scuttling into the teeming crowd. But we know they are about to go back to Bosnia, so they will be no future trouble to Law and his impossibly tall Scandinavian wife.

And of course, he may experience some discomfort over the fact that Binoche was only sleeping with him to try and blackmail him to protect her son, the (lovely, really) Artful Dodger who broke into the office. But ultimately it means that no matter how much of a shit Law is, it doesn't really matter because she didn't love him anyway.

His wife is a monster. I'm not sure that is really to the benefit of the movie; surely the obvious point that London can be a mean, hostile place would be more subtly - and forcefully- made if we were comparing immigrants and refugees with a normal middle-class woman, not a spoilt, vapid bitch? I do feel that giving her a character should have been the job of the filmmaker. As it was I was unable to tell if I was supposed to find her sympathetic on the grounds that 'money can't buy you happiness' or repellant, which in fact she was.

There are good touches. Binoche's styling and wardrobe betray precisely the desperate attempts at glamour of someone who doesn't stand a chance (tellingly, in the scene where she sleeps with Law, stripping down to a nylon slip and very functional bra), while the Scandinavian depressive has a wall of built-in wardrobe and can afford to wear boho-chic Converse. But is it overkill? Does anyone at all still wear those slips??

Over and over Minghella does this: hammers home an insight that was already obvious all on its own. You get the feeling he doesn't even realise what a big baby his character is.

It pains me to think that there is anyone as gormless as this couple actually living in this city. It pains me even more to think that Anthony Minghella may not have realised how gormless they really are. His film takes the safe, comfortable route every time there is a choice to be made, giving the council-estate women chic orange glass lamps and retro fittings, and allowing Law's babyishness to reside under a veneer of vague, respectable concern. Ultimately the middle-class viewer can, if he or she wishes, leave the cinema feeling pretty damn good for having spotted the Stravinsky.

And yet in movie terms these people may not be all that bad. The friend I saw it with expostulated afterwards: "You know, this could easily have been a Richard Curtis film."