The Beat That My Heart Skipped - Palm Beach Post movie review

'The Beat That My Heart Skipped': A not-so-different drummer

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

As real estate prices keep going higher, maybe more movies will feature landlords as villains.

That is the case with this arty French film with the lyrical title, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, in which a thug named Thomas Seyr (Romain Duris), whose father is a slumlord and whose mother was a classical concert pianist, is torn between those worlds.

Wellspring Media

'The Beat That My Heart Skipped'

C+

The verdict: A real estate thug yearns to become a concert pianist in this arty but predictible remake of James Toback's Fingers.

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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If a low-life with a yearning for a music career sounds familiar, it could be the echo of this summer's Hustle & Flow, about the pimp with a knack for rap. More likely it is because director-writer Jacques Audriard has remade James Toback's 1978 cult favorite Fingers, which featured Harvey Keitel as the musician wannabe. Audriard's shadowy film cuts back on Toback's surreal elements, but the downbeat tale still feels awfully predictable.

The plot follows three prongs: Thomas' piano practice sessions with an Asian instructress (Lihn-Dan Pham), working up to an audition with a powerful agent, plus Thomas' efforts to drive away deadbeat tenants with violence in order to raise rents and his affair with his business partner's wife, who was suspicious of her husband's fidelity.

Although Audriard adds touches of originality to each thread, they all end up where you would have predicted at the start.