"Personal, Honest and Skinless": Breaking and Entering Premieres in New York

Director Anthony Minghella arrives at the premiere of Breaking and Entering Thursday in New York (Photo: Christopher Campbell)

By Christopher Campbell

Harvey Weinstein may be in Park City, but even his spirit seemed absent from the New York premiere of Breaking and Entering Thursday evening. Maybe it was because this is Anthony Minghella's first film for the Weinsteins that doesn't guarantee Harvey a seat at the Oscars. Or maybe nobody involved with the film even intended for an awards season push.

"They were different kinds of movies," Minghella said of his last three films (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain) all of which were at least nominated for Academy Awards. Of course, he probably didn’t mean that they were all better than Breaking and Entering, though the critical response to this film might be the worst he has ever received.

Producer Sydney Pollack tried to explain the difference further. "It's a smaller movie," he told The Reeler outside the Paris Theater. "It's a more personal movie. It's not from a big best seller. It's more like his first film (Truly, Madly, Deeply)."

The spin seemed to that because it is an original film, it cannot be Oscar-worthy. At least everyone present appeared to be pleased with the result, and surely in the end that is all that matters. Minghella, for instance, was just happy to get back to his roots.

"The story has been growing in me since Truly, Madly Deeply," he said, "and somebody pointed out in a rather alarming way that I hadn’t actually done an original film for over a decade. I couldn’t believe that, and I tried to work it out, and realized it was true. I thought, before I go any further I ought to start attending to that and making a movie with a smaller cast, smaller crew, smaller budget, smaller concerns, and something that was completely personal and honest and skinless, and without the security blanket of a great book."

Juliette Binoche wasn't interested in discussing Oscars, either, not even her Best Supporting Actress win 10 years ago for The English Patient. I wanted to know is if she felt a need to express constant gratitude to Minghella during the making of Breaking and Entering. A miscommunication led her to mistake "pay him back" for "pay him off," and once we cleared that up, it was too late for storytelling.
"We thanked each other," she finally responded, before being escorted off to the auditorium.

Posted at January 19, 2007 8:41 AM