Minghella and Law on Breaking And Entering

"The mother of my kids," says Jude Law, referring to his ex-wife, Sadie Frost, "was burgled yesterday evening while they were in the house."

It's an irony Law could do without, but the fact that his family has been touched by crime underlines the pertinence of his latest film, Breaking And Entering. Revolving around an architect, played by Law, whose swanky offices, situated in the heart of London's crime-ridden King's Cross, prove irresistible to burglars. Written and directed by Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, Cold Mountain), it's the best warts and all depiction of modern London since Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things in 2002. It's also the director's first film set in London since the movie that made his name, 1991's Truly Madly Deeply.

"After I made Truly Madly Deeply I assumed I'd make another British film," he tells Film4, "and I started writing a story based on my idea about a break-in which I called Breaking And Entering. I've got two notebooks with the title very proudly on the front and then about two pages of writing inside. The idea was I'd write a story about a couple who come home from a party to discover that their house has been burgled and discover that, as well as things having been taken, things have been added. But I could never really progress that story very much."

As it turned out, Minghella's next film wasn't British. Snapped up by Hollywood, he went on to specialise in luscious, intelligent epics, as typified by his 1996 near-masterpiece The English Patient for which he won a Best Director Oscar. But it was while he was in the midst of another arduous epic shoot, Romania standing in for the US on Cold Mountain, that new life was breathed into his Breaking And Entering idea.

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