:
Romain Duris,
Romain Duris,
Niels Arestrup,
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:
Jacques Audiard,
Jacques Audiard
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: Not Rated
: Fox Lorber
: Drama, Foreign, France, Crime
: 107 min.
: French
: English
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A man finds his heart and soul torn between loyalty to his family and a need to be redeemed from his violent lifestyle in this powerful drama from France. Tom (Romain Duris) is a man in his early thirties who finds himself caught between two very different worlds. Tom loves music, and longs to have a career as a concert pianist; he also has talent, and is taking advanced music lessons from Miao-Lin (Linh Dan Pham). But Tom supports himself working as a collection agent for his father, Robert (Niels Arestrup), a mid-level gangster and loan shark, as well as helping Sami (Gilles Cohen) and Fabrice (Jonathan Zaccai), two of Robert's cronies who put together crooked real-estate deals. Tom's hair-trigger temper makes it easy for him to adapt to the violent life of a gangster's muscle man, but he wants to give his creative side a chance to grow, and struggles to get his skills in order for an audition with a concert promoter interested in his music. Tom is also walking on a wire with his employers by having an affair with Aline (Aure Atika), Fabrice's wife, and is forced to mediate a bitter feud between his father and a Russian gangster, Minskov (Anton Yakovlev). A remake of James Toback's acclaimed directorial debut, Fingers, The Beat That My Heart Skipped (aka De Battre Mon Coeur S'Est Arrêté) was nominated for the Golden Bear award at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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| Beating Fast
by talltale
December 14, 2005 - 5:15 PM PST
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4 out of 4 members found this review helpful
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THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED (why do they need the "that" in the title?) is a triumph for lead actor Romain Duris ("L'Auberge Espagnole"). What a performance! Little wonder Duris was nominated for a European Film Award. (The film won another award for its musical score, which is impressive, eclectic and immensely listenable.) Based on James Tobak's 1978 "Fingers," this remake is in several ways the better movie. In fact, for awhile, I was thinking perhaps Toback's work should be consistently remade by the French (imagine Emmanuelle Beart in a French "When Will I Be Loved"!). But as the film winds down, it gets klutzy: one of those sudden "Two Years Later" titles appears on-screen, and an already coincidence-heavy story goes over the top.
For much of its running time, however, it provides gripping reality, along with an in-your-face, can't-look-away view of the seamier side of Paris. And the juxtaposition of the musical/artistic and angry/sleazy halves of the lead character come together beautifully, if frustratingly. Jacques Audiard ("A Self-Made Hero," "Read My Lips") directs and writes with enough authority to have been able to come up with a less facile ending. Otherwise this is a terrific character study (critics who've called it a "thriller" clearly don't understand the term.) |
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 6.70)
63 Votes
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