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The Beat That My Heart Skipped

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There is a distinct quality and style that most French films have, among them, the subtle music that plays on the background, or the use of silence to heighten emotions. But this movie made use of a much `louder' more modern music to really bring in the characters. Directed by Jacques Audiard, The Beat that my Heart Skipped is actually a remake based on the 1978 American movie Fingers. But unlike some remakes, it surpasses the original, not only because of the vision of its Director but for the powerful portrayal of its lead actor, Romain Duris.

In one of the most memorable performances of any actor of his generation, Duris transformed himself into Tom, a hoodlum who terrorizes poor urban dwellers in order to buy cheap properties and sell them for profits. There is a tradition to his work as he inherits the same `vocation' from his father. There is, however, a certain side to Tom, an artistic side, the one talent he inherited from his dead mother- the love of classical music and an ability (a remarkable talent, actually) to play the piano. As he struggles to maintain some semblance of `humanity' in his arresting and despicable character, he has to make a choice whether to remain loyal to his father and continue in their work or pursue a career in music, perhaps the only way out for him and a chance to redeem himself.

"De battre mon coeur s'est arręté", is more than just a film about self-discovery and of love, it is a powerful testament to the ability of an individual to change.

Tom (Romain Duris) works as a sort of real-estate thug. He and his partners trash buildings in low-income areas, buying them low and selling them high for a quick profit. It's a grotesque scam that involves letting sewer rats loose in target buildings so as to scare out squatters and sometimes paying tenants.
Tom's work is morally corrupt and physically debilitating and Tom manifests this corruptness in the very core of his being: he's depressed, violent, short-tempered and vehemently without empathy and humanity. He is only seemingly nice when a good-looking woman is around and that is only so he can bed her.
Then one day he spots his dead mother's music manager who promises him an audition which draws Tom back into his musical training: something he deserted many years before. Tom throws himself into classical music at first as a challenge to recapture his talent. But what he doesn't initially realize is that music will ultimately prove to be his salvation...turning him from the darkness to the light.
Music has always been something that Tom has associated with what little good he has experienced in his life. To him, music recalls his loving mother. To him, music has always meant love. And he grasps at a life in music like a drowning man grasps at a life preserver. He is as neurotic at reclaiming his musical talent as he is at stealing, drinking, drugging and cheating. He has a goal for the first time in many, many years.
Romain Duris ("The Spanish Apartment," "Le Divorce") heretofore has always been the good guy: young and sweet yet in both of these roles he was always a little devious, a little devilish. Here, Duris is all about Cuban-heeled shoes, black leather jacket, buffed out body, dyed black hair and unflinching scowl. More importantly, Tom has a big black hole where his soul should be and he uses his love of music to fill it...little by little as a compulsive eater uses food to fill an emptiness that is never quite satiated. Duris gives a profound, thoughtful and passionate performance.
Director Jacques Audiard (the sublime "Read My Lips") has made a film redolent of darkness and misanthropy on one hand and hope and light on the other. And it is this ambiguity that makes this film snap with world-weary wit and non-sanctimonious truth.
Redemption through the intricacies and beauty found within and between the notes of a Bach Toccata? Oh, yes.

Tom (Romain Duris) works as a sort of real-estate thug. He and his partners trash buildings in low-income areas, buying them low and selling them high for a quick profit. It's a grotesque scam that involves letting sewer rats loose in target buildings so as to scare out squatters and sometimes paying tenants.
Tom's work is morally corrupt and physically debilitating and Tom manifests this corruptness in the very core of his being: he's depressed, violent, short-tempered and vehemently without empathy and humanity. He is only seemingly nice when a good-looking woman is around and that is only so he can bed her.
Then one day he spots his dead mother's music manager who promises him an audition which draws Tom back into his musical training: something he deserted many years before. Tom throws himself into classical music at first as a challenge to recapture his talent. But what he doesn't initially realize is that music will ultimately prove to be his salvation...turning him from the darkness to the light.
Music has always been something that Tom has associated with what little good he has experienced in his life. To him, music recalls his loving mother. To him, music has always meant love. And he grasps at a life in music like a drowning man grasps at a life preserver. He is as neurotic at reclaiming his musical talent as he is at stealing, drinking, drugging and cheating. He has a goal for the first time in many, many years.
Romain Duris ("The Spanish Apartment," "Le Divorce") heretofore has always been the good guy: young and sweet yet in both of these roles he was always a little devious, a little devilish. Here, Duris is all about Cuban-heeled shoes, black leather jacket, buffed out body, dyed black hair and unflinching scowl. More importantly, Tom has a big black hole where his soul should be and he uses his love of music to fill it...little by little as a compulsive eater uses food to fill an emptiness that is never quite satiated. Duris gives a profound, thoughtful and passionate performance.
Director Jacques Audiard (the sublime "Read My Lips") has made a film redolent of darkness and misanthropy on one hand and hope and light on the other. And it is this ambiguity that makes this film snap with world-weary wit and non-sanctimonious truth.
Redemption through the intricacies and beauty found within and between the notes of a Bach Toccata? Oh, yes.

This is an exceptional film, a wonderful tale of violence and spiritual redemption. The actions lead to a tension building climax. Romain Duris was superb by any measure in the lead role of Tom. Whereas the other reviewers do a super job of telling the storyline and comment upon the excellent cinematography and acting, I would like to point out that this is a wonderful retelling of the heroic myth of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King. I will give a Jungian interpretation of the film below:

Tom, the real-estate thug, is a modern Parsifal. Caught in a world of violence, he has tasted the Holy Grail, the spiritual window opened by classical piano, through his deceased mother. But he now lives in the world of the wounded Fisher King, his mobster father, ill and aging quickly. The world of the Fisher King is always in disarray, which is certainly the case of the world of Paris' low rent dumps and greedy slum lords. Tom and his father's world consist of making and breaking business deals, using insider information for real estate speculation, and driving squatters from deserted buildings. But in the search for the Holy Grail, Parsifal must integrate the feminine into his soul by laying beside his Anima, neither seducing her nor being seduced by her. Tom falls sexually twice in the film, seducing his business partner's wife and then a Russian mobster's girlfriend. But, the Chinese piano tutor becomes the Anima that is not seduced and does not seduce until his personality is integrated. He remains chaste with her until his spiritual task is completed. The death of his father makes Tom the Fisher King and thus the corruption can end if Tom is able to fully integrate the feminine into his soul. This he does and he passes an ultimate test of revenge and forgiveness in the final minutes of the film. In the final scene, we see Tom, with bloody hands sit in the concert hall, watching his tutor play in concert, and we see in his bright and deep set eyes that he has been redeemed and made whole. A lovely re-telling of the classic myth of male emotional development.

If you are not a Jungian or have never studies Carl Jung, never fear, for the film is 100% excellent for its superb entertainment value alone.

Since you can read it elsewhere, I won't explain the premise. Instead, I will simply talk about the film itself.

The cinematography is decent, and the lighting is very good. It manages to capture each moment in a pale, sometimes almost dull, wash of color - perfectly reflecting the "nitty grittiness" of some of the scenes. The acting is good, and the casting very well done. The soundtrack is excellent.

All in all, the film is fresh - very different from many of the films I've seen lately, and radically so from any American film. The protagonist's struggle to recapture the piano is passionate and believable - especially for those of us who have ever endeavored an instrument. He's a fascinating character, and one well worth seeing.

Definitely check out this film - French language, if you can (I'm not certain if they've dubbed it, but it would really lose something in translation).

If there is something worthy to remark around the vision of the French screenwriters is their portentous and winged imagination to carve in relief these little anecdotes of the quotidian life, transformed in formidable scripts.

At his 28, Tom seems to follow the traces of his father according the familiar tradition: a nasty and corrupt business. His mother was pianist, and he possessed talent although, he already left the practice of the instrument. A fortuitous encounter impulses and re-enliven his forgotten but still latent expectations inside him, because at that moment seems to be the only truly fruitful and transcendental around his environment.

The clash between these two clearly opposite ways of living, the progressive withdrawal respect his father, eventually will be exerting on him a visible pressure that will modify his approach respect the life.

The supporting dialogues with his Chinese piano tutor, the linguistic barriers among them are not by themselves able to stop the genuine interest for his continuous progress.

The 2005 French film DE BATTRE MON COEUR S'EST ARRETE ("The Beat that My Heart Skipped") is director Jacques Audiard's remake of the obscure 1978 American film Fingers.

Thomas (Romain Duris) is a shady real estate developer, releasing rats in apartment blocks to drive out the residents, then buying up the property before they can move back in. He is torn between this dishonourable profession like his scumbag father (Niels Arestrup) and a career as a concert pianist like his late mother. Seeking a way out of his violent lifestyle, he hires a Vietnamese pianist (Linh Dan Pham) to help him reach a professional level, and though they share no common language, it proves a fruitful partnership.

Though the story remains powerful for much of its length, things seem somewhat rushed towards the end. It is suggested that character of Thomas' father's ex-girlfriend will play a major role, but then she disappears. And the ending itself, which I won't give away, is an ambiguous statement about whether Thomas has found peace with himself or not. Perhaps these flaws were present in FINGERS, I don't know, though I do know that the remake that is DE BATTRE has 17 minutes of new scenes, mainly dealing with Thomas' work with his piano teacher.

Regardless of its plot and the comparison to the original, what makes DE BATTRE an interest effort of its own are the performances. Many viewers will have known Romain Duris only from his turn as the innocent European manchild Xavier in 2000's
L'Auberge espagnole and its 2005 sequel Les Poupees russes. Here, however, Duris convincingly plays his occasionally villanous role and keeps up the nervousness of a man who can't find a way out.

The film's soundtrack is an unusual mix of obscure pop, classical piano, and (Tom's personal favourite) the electro genre that exploded in 2005. The film music by Alexandre Desplats won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2005.

"The Beat that My Heart Skipped" is somewhat of a rarity - a foreign language remake of an American movie. Director Jacques Audiard has adapted and updated the 1978 gritty American film, "Fingers," in this equally gritty French movie, with Romain Duris taking on the role originally played by Harvey Keitel. Duris' Thomas is a small-time thug who also happens to be a talented pianist, a skill he seemingly inherited from his mother who died years earlier. He's torn between these two disparate worlds, with his father continually pressuring him to stay in this thuggish underworld. When Thomas receives an offer to audition for his mother's former agent, he hires a Vietnamese pianist to tutor him, and he starts to tilt toward this world hoping to escape through his piano playing; however, his associates have other ideas.

This excellent character study contains flashes of violence, but it is not a typical gangster film. The focus is on how this character attempts to navigate two nearly diametrically opposed worlds. Audiard and his co-writer (Tonino Benacquista) make some intelligent changes in updating the original script by James Toback, and Audiard's work as director is top-notch. Duris and the rest of the cast are also excellent, with Duris a bit suaver in his role than was Keitel which helps makes the film seem more contemporary.

To enjoy "The Beat that My Heart Skipped," you obviously don't need to have seen the original movie, but it does provide a fascinating contrast. The film deservedly nearly swept the Cesar Awards (the equivalent of the French Oscars), winning Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Niels Arestrup as Thomas' father), Best Adapted Screenplay, and four other awards. Hopefully, this movie as well as "Fingers" will find the audiences they deserve.

The Beat My Heart Skipped (Jacques Audiard, 2005)

Audiard (Venus Beauty Institute)'s latest (as I write this) film is a combination of existential crime drama and Shine. Which, I have to admit, sounds like a pretty terrible combination, but this is Jacques Audiard. He doesn't know how to do terrible, and the raft of awards this movie won (including the Best Foreign Film BAFTA) would seem to bear that out.

The story concerns Thomas Seyr (L'Auberge Espanole's Romain Duris), who as the film opens is straddling the fine line between being a real estate speculator and a hired thug, the latter of which has him following in the footsteps of his father, who has grown ineffectual in his old age. Thomas' late mother, however, was a renowned concert pianist, and when Thomas runs into his mother's old manager quite by chance, he finds that his desire to play the piano has never really left him (in his spare time, when not chasing squatters out of his buildings, Thomas creates techno music his father loathes), and when said manager offers him a chance to audition as a concert pianist in his own right, he starts taking a crash refresher course in piano with Miao Linh (Indochine's Linh Dan Pham), an even harsher taskmaster than his father. Complicating all this is Thomas' complicity in the peccadilloes of his business partner, Fabrice (Les Revenantes' Jonathan Zaccai); he enables his pal mostly because Thomas is in love with Fabrice's wife Aline (Aure Atika, recently of Tsunami: The Aftermath) and is trying to find a way to use it against him. Yeah, Thomas is a man whose moral principles are kind of on the shady side-- but he believes, and we believe with him, that getting back into the world of classical music may rehabilitate him.

There's the rub, then-- we, too, believe it. Audiard's prodigy is a well-drawn, sensitive character we can identify with all too readily, for the choices he's faced with and the complications in his life are universal, if on a grand and twisted scale. Did Audiard realize this? I can't imagine he didn't, but it didn't get in the way of his telling a good story. And a good story it is, frenetic (and the piano-practicing scenes are even more so than the thug life, which is amazing) and ludicrous and seven different types of fun. If Kirkegaard had written crime films, he might have come up with something like this. A must-see. ****

Jacques Audiard, who previously gave us the very interesting Read My Lips (2001) and the cute and clever Venus Beauty Institute (1999), manages to create here a story about a character who is both a petty gangster and a pianist. Not exactly your usual combination of talents. Romain Duris plays Thomas Seyr who is that character. Duris brings an animal sensuality and an artist's sensitivity to the part. He is an actor of unusual skills and vitality. Audiard gets the most out of him.

In the beginning Tom Seyr is in apprenticeship to take over his father's way of life in a French version of the protection racket. Their particular hustle involves getting properties condemned by trashing them or infecting them with rats or some other vermin, forcibly throwing out squatters or tenants, then buying the property on the cheap, and then finally selling it at a nice profit. In the end, Tom...well, I can't give you the ending, but I can say that it is entirely agreeable and surprising with just a little twist on what we might expect.

Neils Arestrup plays the father. There are some other interesting characters and a lot of macho action, a bit of blood here and there, some quick and easy sex. And then there is an old piano teacher that Tom happens to run into one day who invites him to an audition. Tom has not played the piano seriously for years, but just seeing his old teacher brings back the thrill and the deep intimacy he once had with music, and recalls to him the career of his deceased mother, who was once a concert pianist who had hoped that her son would be too. He had the talent.

But of course playing the piano at that level is not something you can take up, let go, and then go back to. But Tom thinks maybe he can do it with a little practice. But he needs a teacher to prepare for the audition. When he tries to get one he is effectively laughed at since he is 28-years-old and is very much out of practice and indeed never really practiced that much. But by chance (there are a number of plot furtherances in this film that come about by chance--but that is not a problem because the chance meetings seem natural and are events that would probably happen eventually)--and so by chance he is hooked up with a young woman fresh from China who speaks no French, but is an expert pianist who needs a little money. She agrees to help him. Her name is Miao Lin. She is played brilliantly with subtlety and finesse by French-Vietnamese actress Linh Dan Pham, whom I previously saw in Indochine (1992) playing the adopted child of Catherine Deneuve's character.

The acting ability of Romain Duris and Linh Dan Pham are what carry this film. Audiard's direction is a bit scattered at times and especially in the beginning lacks focus, but a clever storyline and his ability to get great performances from the players overcome these faults.

See this for Romain Duris who gives a virtuoso performance and for Linh Dan Pham who captivates with restrained intensity.