The city of refuge: Deconstructing cosmopolitanism in Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering

Abstract

Anthony Minghella’s feature film Breaking and Entering (2006) constitutes a kaleidoscopic portrait of the Camden cityscape around King’s Cross/St Pancras, a North London area whose gradual gentrification at the beginning of the 21st century makes it the site of perpetual clashes along diverse lines of division, whether cultural, legal, social, ethnic or personal. Minghella tells the story of the encounter between well-to-do Londoner Will Francis and two Bosnian refugees, Amira and Miro, and in so doing explores both the destructive and affirmative potential to arise from a demographics of impermanence and difference. Focusing on the ways in which the various characters perceive and make use of their urban surroundings, and in which they negotiate the boundaries of personal space (both in literal and figurative terms), this article focuses on the film’s affinity with Derrida’s deconstruction of cosmopolitanism and its relevance to London as a postcolonial European, rather than British, metropolis.