The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Jacques Audiard creates a powerful and compelling Paris-set crime drama starring the renowned Romain Duris in one of his slickest ever roles.

Following in his father's footsteps, Tom (Romain Duris) works in the darker areas of the real estate business, doing crooked business deals and roughing people up who refuse to pay. In addition to this underworld lifestyle, Tom aspires to be a concert pianist, like his mother, whose extraordinary talent he seems to have inherited. After running into a man who managed his mother, an opportunity arises for him to prove himself at an audition. But with pressure from his father he becomes increasingly divided about what future he wants to pursue: that of his father, the criminal, or that of his mother, the pianist.

Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips, A Prophet, See How They Fall, A Self-Made Hero), one of the most talked about French directors at work today, masterfully creates a multi-layered world of ruthless gangsters and sensitive musicians, in a film that finally brought him the international recognition he deserved. The film is a remake of the little-seen James Toback film Fingers (1978), which, while interesting for its portrayal of the gritty underworld of 70s New York with Harvey Keitel playing the protagonist, lacks its successor's intelligence and sophistication. In other words, through transposing the story to modern-day Paris and introducing Romain Duris, the film-maker draws out the character's sensitivity and ambivalence, of which makes the story so intriguing.

Audiard elicits a fantastic central performance from Romain Duris (Le Péril Jeune, Dans Paris), who manages to convey so well the conflicted emotions and complexities of his character. Combined with Alexandre Desplat's rich score and the cinematographer's seemingly authentic treatment of the urban landscape, the film feels remarkably fresh and exciting.

On the whole, The Beat That My heart Skipped is a gripping crime drama, one that brings together two towering figures of contemporary French cinema, namely Jacques Audiard and Romain Duris, while proving the exception-to-the-rule when it comes to remakes surpassing their predecessors.