THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED (De battre mon coeur
s'est arrete)
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Wellspring
Grade: B+
Directed by: Jacques Audiard
Written by: Jacques Audiard, Tonino Benacquista
Cast: Romain Duris, Aure Atika, Emmanuelle Devos, Niels
Arestrup, Jonathan Zaccai, Linh Dan Pham, Melanie Laurent
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 4/8/05
It's little wonder that "love" is the most talked-about word in the
English language. Not only is love a powerful emotion whose
fulfillment or non-fulfillment by individuals determines to what
extent they're psychologically healthy or neurotic; but also
because there are so many kinds of love. In "The Beat That My
Heart Skipped," Jacques Audiard ("Read My Lips") displays his
principal character's sexual love, his love of music, his love for
his father, his platonic love for his piano instructor. Romain
Duris, who tackles the role of Tom and, given that the tale is told
from his point of view is in virtually every scene, delivers a
stunning performance. His Tom is a man who at the age of
twenty-eight has not yet grown up (who at that age has?) and
who during the course of the story matures in fits and starts. His
conflict is one that would appear insurmountable, as though the
same attributes could not possibly be present in one tortured
soul. He must ultimately decide whether to continue acting as a
sleazy real-estate shark, who struts his stuff in the opening
scene by releasing rats into a building housing people that his
company wants quickly evicted, or whether to redirect his
energies from money into art by returning to the piano, to strive
to become a concert pianist.
Tom is essentially torn between his father's will and his memory
of his deceased mother. His dad, Robert (Niels Arestrup), runs
the realty firm that frequently acts illegally, a man who assigns
his son to such tasks as collecting back rent from the owner of a
cous-cous restaurant, threatening to murder the poor fellow
unless he'd come up with the money pronto. His mother, on the
other hand, had been a professional pianist whose influence on
her son had unfortunately fallen on deaf ears, as Tom, torn
between commerce and art, has chosen the former.
The film is an adaptation, French style, of James Toback's 1978
melodrama, "Fingers," a fascinating story of an aspiring concert
pianist who reluctantly collects on debts owed to his
domineering father, with Harvey Keitel in the role now inhabited
by Duris. Some inspiration may have come from James Foley's
film adaptation of David Mamet's Pulitzer prize-winning play,
"Glengarry Glen Ross," in performance once again on
Broadway, about an office full of desperate real-estate
salesmen/con artists. Real estate does appear to be a macho
game, though, realistically, somewhat less grungy than depicted
in the movies.
Cineastes are probably familiar with Duris's work in Cedric
Klapisch's "L'Auberge Espagnole," with the actor as a 25-year-
old French graduate student who goes to Spain for his year
abroad and winds up liivng in a cramped apartment with seven
strangers of different nationalities. But "L'Auberge" is bland
narrative while "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" is scorching
melodrama. This time Duris juggles the demands of his father
with the more gentle prodding of his Vietnamese-French piano
teacher, Miao-lin (Linh-Dan Pham). When he's not busy figuring
which way his life will turn–toward the evil (masculine) or the
good (feminine)--he's chasing skirts. In one scene he
confesses his love to a skeptical Aline (Aure Atika), having
previously covered up the wanderings of her husband Chris
(Emmanuelle Devos). In another, he's so determined to find out
more about a Russian thug, Minskov (Anton Yakovlev), a man
who refuses to reimburse Tom's father for a cancelled project,
that he follows his girlfriend into a women's room, climbs up on
the seat of the adjacent toilet, and barrels head-first into his
prey. (If this kind of frisky, playful behavior is his immature self,
the one that owns him until he ultimately grows up, maybe Peter
Pan syndrome isn't so bad after all!)
Aside from Domain Duris's Oscar-worthy performance,
exploited particularly on photographer Stephane Fontaine's
close-ups when we watch his face turn from playful to agonized,
"The Beat" has, well, a great beat, both from Alexandre
Desplat's original score and Bach's intricate, intellectual
toccatas and fugues. "The Beat" does not have the many twists
and turns of director Audiard's "Read My Lips,"–a psychosexual
heist thriller that features a partially deaf, ignored female office
worker who hires a thuggish ex-con as her partner in crime--but
thrives on Duris's complex performance in a film whose
melodramatic violence alternates easily with unsentimental love.
Not Rated. 107 minutes © 2005 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com
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