The attraction of London

Breaking & Entering
Originally uploaded by idealterna.

I was in London some weeks back for work. I cannot help it. Although the city is so dirty, overcrowded, smelly and totally out of proportion considering prizes, I still find it highly attractive. The more i visit London, the more I want to move there for some time. To make it there.

Although most of Londoners are doing socio-economically miserably, it is still one of the few places where all possibilities are within reach. And a city where the default option of a white man is really disappearing. I also find it wonderful how people stay alone in the same space, i.e. how everyone creates their own bubble in an overpacked underground cart. The modernism idea of my freedom ending only when it starts interfearing with the freedom of others.

My London addiction got another boost yesterday due to Anthony Minghella's new film Breaking and Entering. It tells a story of an architect Will (the talented Jude Law who gets only better as the years go by) who moves his office to the turmoil area of King's Cross. As someone breaks into the office twice, Will gets obsessed with catching the thieves and one night follows young Bosnian Miro home only to fall in love with Miro's mother Amira (Juliette Binoche).

The film is one of the rare pieces where dialogue is believable, where happy ending is only relative, where sadness is written on everyone's face and where the roughness of London is portrayed honestly. Juliette Binoche does an astonishing performance as an immigrant mother losing control of her son and willing to do all it takes to keep the young juvenile on the right tracks.

As I sit constantly in an office with three people from the Balkans, I paid a lot of attention to Binoche's accent. She has had a good coach. That mixture of warmth and clear articulation is exactly how a lot of them sound.