SCREEN

At least he keeps things small. There are no snow-covered battlefields or vast expanses of desert, but there is an artfully gritty London neighborhood known as King's Cross, which Minghella depicts with as much care and precision as he's brought to any more exotic locale. King's Cross is exotic as well, in its way, a rough neighborhood that's undergoing a slow and painful gentrification, courtesy in part of an architectural firm headed by well-meaning liberal Will (Law). This is a film full of well-meaning liberals, and somewhere in it might be a critique of the way they inadvertently objectify those they are trying to help, demeaning them as much as lifting them up.

Or maybe it's just about adultery. Minghella seems too timid to commit to a real point of view, maneuvering Will away from his sensitive live-in girlfriend, Liv (Penn), and into the arms of Bosnian immigrant Amira (Binoche), whose son has been committing the titular acts on Will's fancy new office digs in the middle of King's Cross.

At various times, the film threatens to become a thriller or a dark drama of betrayal similar to another Law movie, Closer, but at each turn it simply backs away. Characters make decisions that are expedient for the plot but rarely make sense for them as people; the affair between Will and Amira never seems anything but awkward. By the end, all of the complexity has melted away, and the accomplished cast can do little more than exit the film with grace, and one last look at some very pretty architecture.