The Beat That My Heart Skipped - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution movie review

'The Beat That My Heart Skipped' strikes the right chord

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

You can bet the farm that any remake based on a James Toback movie is going to be an improvement. Toback's cinematic sins stretch back 30 years and include such hipness-afflicted clunkers as "Two Girls and a Guy" and "When Will I Be Loved."

Director Jacques Audiard, who made the excellent "Read My Lips," has chosen to give Toback's 1978 film "Fingers" a makeover. In the original, Harvey Keitel played a crook who dreams of being a concert pianist. Audiard moves the setting to Paris and casts handsome Romain Duris in the Keitel role.

Wellspring Media

'The Beat That My Heart Skipped'

The verdict: Strikes the right chord of discord.

Director: Jacques Audiard
Starring: Romain Duris, Niels Arestrup, Emmanuelle Devos, Linh Dan Pham, Aure Atika
Run time: 107 minutes
Release date: July 1, 2005
Rating: Not Rated.

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Tom, as the character's named, likes to say he's in real estate. Meaning, he and his "investment partners" do everything from planting rats in an apartment to brutalizing squatters when they see a property that interests them. Devalue and evict is the name of the game.

This is the legacy of his father, Robert (a wonderfully debauched Niels Arestrup). The old man still has his hands in plenty of dirty real estate deals, but these days he prefers his son do the heavy beating.

Tom gets his love of music from his deceased mother, a piano virtuoso. When her former manager suggests he audition — though he hasn't practiced in 10 years — Tom's fingers start wiggling almost in spite of themselves. The next thing you know, he's signed up for lessons with a prim, pretty, porcelain-skinned Vietnamese woman (Linh Dan Pham).

Which will win out, banging piano keys or banging heads?

"The Beat My Heart Skipped" isn't on a par with "Read My Lips." That's because, no matter how Audiard dresses it up, its bone structure remains Toback's.

Still, Audiard does a number of things quite well. His take on the father-son dynamic is remarkably well-observed. Their relationship oozes love-hate ugliness and distrust. Tom blatantly disapproves of his father's fiancee, calling her a whore. Robert pointedly dismisses his son's piano-man aspirations. Yet neither can give up on the other, so they hold tight to their curdled family bond, unwilling to let go or to change.

The picture looks wonderful. Cinematographer Stephane Fontaine shows us a succession of gaudy nights in Paris, punctuated by neon or blood or sometimes both.

More typically seen in romantic comedies, Duris has Colin Farrell's eyebrows and chin. His work is compelling but his character, as written, is not especially involving (another bit of Toback debris). We keep asking ourselves why we should care about this thug, no matter how much he loves Bach.

Still, the movie keeps you in its grasp. It's a tense, jumpy, sometimes amusing work that posits the inherent duality of everything. And, most definitely, the intriguing duality of people.