BREAKING ALL THE RULES WITH A WISE TAKE ON LOVE.

Byline: Bob Strauss

Film Critic

It's an unsettling pleasure, but pleasurable nonetheless, to listen to adults talk about intimate issues in an engaged, intelligent manner for the better part of two hours.

That's what Jude Law and Robin Wright Penn do in "Breaking and Entering," the first film that "English Patient" director Anthony Minghella has made from his own original screenplay since the 1991 "Truly Madly Deeply."

And if the film just stuck with its troubled central couple, it would be a masterpiece. But Minghella adds onto the project big thoughts about urban renewal and the immigrant influx in contemporary London.

In his best work to date, Law plays a landscape architect, Will Francis, who moves his design firm into the crime-ridden King's Cross section of town. This area has a large population of Eastern Europeans, and Miro (Rafi Gavron), the adolescent son of Bosnian refugee Amira (Juliette Binoche), keeps breaking into the new offices to steal computers and such.

Will sets to staking out the place at night. This has its practical aspect, but it's also a good excuse to stay away from home, where conflict with Liv (Wright Penn), his lover of 10 years, is metastasizing.

Will whiles away many cold, dark stakeout hours talking (just talking) to a wised-up Romanian hooker ("The Departed's" Vera Farmiga, in an amusing but underdeveloped performance). But he doesn't cross the line until he meets the parkour-practicing thief's mother. His and Amira's passion for one another starts out genuinely. But as both come to realize that Miro's fate is tied to their affair, they do things people in love never should.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

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BREAKING AND ENTERING - Three stars

(R: sex, nudity, violence, language, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright Penn, Rafi Gavron, Ray Winstone.

Director: Anthony Minghella.

Running time: 1 hr. 59 min.

Playing: Arclight in Hollywod and AMC Seven Theatres in Santa Monica.

In a nutshell: Marvelously mature when addressing infidelity and relationships, less certain about dealing with immigrants in London.