Amazon.com: The Beat That My Heart Skipped could single-handedly give remakes a good name. Based on the 1978 American movie Fingers, The Beat... stars Romain Duris (L'Auberge Espagnole) as Tom, a hoodlum who works the shady side of real estate--evicting poor families from slums, cutting quick and dirty deals in the middle of the night--following in the footsteps of his sleazy father. But clearly Tom loathes both himself and everything he does. One night he accidentally runs into the man who managed Tom's mother, who was a pianist; the manager asks Tom himself to audition, as Tom once showed promise. All at once Tom hires a tutor and neglects his "duties," raising the ire of his cohorts but starting to make himself happy. This could be hokum about the power of art, but Duris' performance is so visceral, so emotionally vivid and engaging, that The Beat That My Heart Skipped becomes a remarkable parable about the danger of betraying yourself--all the more powerful because Tom's life doesn't simply get better, it grows dangerously more complicated. A superb movie with excellent performances throughout, making Duris' standout work all the more impressive. --Bret Fetzer
"Playing piano is making you flip." "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.
Absolutely BRILLIANT film! The best foreign film of 2005 without a doubt! If Romain Duris' performance had any more heat to it, he would undoubtedly have burned the celluloid straight off the reel, thus ruining this piece of cinematographic genius in post-production. He is alternantively sensitive, rageful, violent, and mundane, all in the course of two hours. Even more remarkably, he manages to pull off these disparate emotions in rapid, BELIEVABLE succession. We get a wonderful image of his character, depressed with his life as a small time thug who works in "real estate," but nonetheless aspires to the greatness his mother achieved as a concert pianist. Your heart will break no fewer than once during his journey, and will probably break at two or three points.
Not only does Audiard explore Tom's (Duris) psychology and personal tragedy, but he also goes back to a subject that he clearly has much interest in, for anyone who's seen "Read My Lips": The idea that love can blossom despite a complete language barrier. The scenes with his piano teacher, Miao Lin, (a Chinese exchange student who speaks Chinese, Viet, and some English, but no French) are almost emotionally draining, as we get tree senses of both frustration and triumph at different points of the film, thanks to Duris' masterful acting and Audiard's insightful direction. The script allows for expansive interpretation, and can show us a very unsympathetic, vulgar, and downright mean Tom, or a very sensitive, aspiring pianist who only wants to succeed the same way his mother did.
Duris very appropriately tows the middle of these two interpretations; there are times at which you love Tom, and others at which you can't stand to look at him. My only minor complaint is the English translation, which at times is a bit awkward and doesn't match the original French dialogue as well as it should. There is a point at which Tom states to his father's newest lover: "J'aime beaucoup mon père." The subtitle reads "I love my father," but really it's more like "I really like my father." I know I'm nitpicking, but I'm not convinced that Tom loved his father at the point in the movie that line is spoken, which is why he says that instead of "J'aime mon père." Minor details and complaints with utter genius, though. If you buy this film, and I highly reccommend that you do, you will not be even the least bit disappointed.
From the Director of 'Read My Lips,' a French remake of 'Fingers.' French director Jacques Audiard is perhaps best known for his 2001 film, Read My Lips (Sur mes lèvres), a modern thriller about disability, insecurity, love, and revenge. Audiard's 2005 film, The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De battre mon caeur s'est arrêté), tells the story of Thomas Seyr (Romain Duris), a small-time real estate thug who aspires to be a concert pianist. When he is not violently evicting poor families from Paris slums, he is practicing Bach's Toccata in E minor on the piano. Tom is a man filled with self-hatred because he has abandoned his dreams just to earn a buck. The film is actually a remake of James Toback's 1978 film Fingers starring Harvey Keitel, who seems much better cast in the role of Tom. One of the notable differences between the two films is that, despite a language barrier, Tom develops a love interest for his Vietnamese piano tutor, Miao Lin (Linh Dan Pham), a theme Audiard also explored in Read My Lips. Ultimately, this film is a lesson about remaining true to one's aspirations, rather than losing one's soul in a day job.
G. Merritt
A remake interesting for Romain Duris' role as a villain 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.
Engaging & Disturbing This movie revolved around the main character who was a "thug" in real estate. He would do despicable things such as putting mice in commercial buildings, evicting poor families out from buildings & so forth. Later, it was revealed that his mum happened to be a prominent professional pianist before her death. Perhaps, he became the person that he was due to disconnection from his family which comprised of his father. By chance, he bumped into his mum's old manager who suggested him for an audition in playing piano. That's when he started to discover his lost passion. As the movie progressed, his life became more complicated as he tangled himself with his colleague's wife, Russian mafia, and his piano teacher. It's rather a brave and absorbing movie that it needed to be seen to appreciate its intensity. Highly recommended.
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