Running time: 118 mins . . . .

WITH so many movies about movies within a movie it's fun for a change to find a movie that turns out to be within a novel, a conceit Stranger Than Fiction elegantly sustains while avoiding the pitfall of showing off its cleverness. Its playful exploration of the nature of the writing process serves instead to deliver an offbeat and teasingly original romantic comedy.

Newcomer Zach Helm picks up on the idea of The Truman Show . . .about a man not knowing he's living in a TV reality show watched by billions of viewers . . .and re-imagines it in terms of a regimented tax inspector Harold Crick who comes to realise that a voice he begins hearing in his head anticipating what he is about to do is actually that of a writer narrating her new novel, the subject of which is his own life.

Not only that, but she's blocked on finding a way to kill him off to provide an appropriate ending. His gradual awareness of what is happening jerks him out of his predictable daily routine. On the advice of a literary academic he steps out of character . . . so to speak . . . and begins perhaps for the first time to enjoy life, even finding the courage to date a beautiful cookie baker (Maggie Gyllenhaal) whose unpaid taxes he's auditing.

He's convinced that if he tracks down the writer he can somehow thwart fate.

After the intense drama of Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland, director Marc Foster shows a deft touch for humour, choreographing performances to create a near-perfect ensemble piece. Ferrell proves he can do deadpan while evoking sympathy, happy to be a straight man to Gyllenhaal's sexily contagious playfulness. Emma Thompson, for much of the movie only a voice, is that Hollywood rarity, a believable writer, unsociable, wrapped up in her imagination, uncompromising. Just as her character gets inside Crick's head, the movie gets inside hers so that we care as much about her novel as we do about what happens to him. Dustin Hoffman delivers a terrific cameo as the academic, while Queen Latifah is a publisher's assistant sent to hurry up the book.

Stranger Than Fiction inevitably has been likened to Adaptation but it's more accessible than any of Charlie Kaufman's movies, certainly not as dark. Helm, on this evidence, is a natural entertainer, less concerned with saying anything deep or challenging than with the sheer fun of saying it.

Breaking And Entering (Anthony Minghella): Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright Penn, Martin Freeman, Rafi Gavron, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga.

Running time: 119 mins . . . .

BREAKING And Entering has similarities with The Bonfire of the Vanities, in that it's about a chance event than causes two parallel worlds to collide. The setting is London instead of New York, and the underworld that intrudes on the life of its yuppie protagonist . . . a trendy architect rather than a Wall Street trader . . . is not the Bronx but London's immigrant underclass. There the similarity ends. The Bonfire of the Vanities was on a large brash canvas, Breaking And Entering is small scale, more concerned with the intimacy of little revealing moments. Even more daring, writer/director Anthony Minghella dares to be optimistic.

The story is about the unlikely meeting of two families brought about when the troubled teenage son (Ravi Gavron) of a Bosnian refugee (Juliette Binoche) burgles the office of an architect (Jude Law) who is working on a major project to regenerate a rundown area near King's Cross. The architect has a Swedish wife (Robin Wright Penn) whose autistic teenage daughter has acute behavioural difficulties.

Their marriage has gone cold.

While setting a trap for the boy, Law becomes acquainted with the mother without her knowing who he is. His attraction to her is compromised by the fact that he is in a sense robbing her emotionally, just as her son robbed him materially.

He comes from a lifestyle accustomed to throwing things away before they're finished, whether a shirt or a suit or a pair of shoes. It's the same with relationships. If they're not working, you move on to another one. She, on the other hand, is used to repairing things. She works as a seamstress. She stands by her son and will do anything to save him, even have an affair with Law.

Breaking And Entering attempts through its characters to provide a portrait of a multicultural London where the only future is to find a way of respecting the otherness of people. Perhaps it tries to be too many things and succeeds in the end . . . although always engrossing . . . in not quite being anything, partly because Law is too shallow and self-centred to make you care much about him.

Vera Famiga . . . so impressive in Martin Scorsese's The Departed . . .has a great cameo as a fast-talking prostitute who drives off with Law's car and Ray Winstone is an unlikely police detective with a penchant for motorbikes. It's left to Juliette Binoche and Robin Penn Wright as the two harrassed mothers to give Breaking And Entering its real emotional substance.