The Beat My Heart Skipped
Director: Jacques Audiard
Stars: Romain Duris, Niels Arestup, Linh Dan Phan, Emmanuelle Devos, Aure Atika
Running time: 100 minutes.
Reviewed by Greg King
This somewhat awkwardly titled French remake of James Toback’s obscure 1977 cult classic Fingers actually works very well, and will especially appeal to audiences unfamiliar with the source material. The original Fingers was a dark and compelling tale, with a heady mix of sex and violence, that came across like a minor league Scorsese film. Harvey Keitel gave an intense and effectively manic performance as a drug addicted minor league New York thug torn between the refined and cultured world of his dead concert pianist mother and the brutal criminal underworld of his father.
This effective and visually stylish Gallic remake from director Jacques Audiard and screenwriter Tonino Benacquisto, who collaborated on the recent Read My Lips, turns the material into a gritty psychological noir thriller about redemption and second chances set against the lurid back streets of Paris.
Romain Duris (recently seen in Tony Gatlif’s Exils and Merchant Ivory’s dry Le Divorce, etc) plays Tommy, a 28 year-old thug forced to cope with the violence surrounding his father’s shady business enterprises. Tommy is often forced to resort to violent and underhanded methods to evict squatters from the squalid apartments owned by his father (Niels Arestup). But a chance encounter with his mother’s former manager sparks in him his former desire to follow in her footsteps.
Tommy resumes music lessons under the tutelage of Chinese immigrant Miao (Linh Dan-Phan), who barely speaks English or French. The pair slowly develop a strong connection based on their mutual love of music and beauty. But the physical and emotional demands of Tommy’s day time role as an enforcer for his father’s crooked real estate empire begin to weigh heavily on his music, and soon something will have to give.
Audiard however successfully reworks the ending and the film ends on a more optimistic note than the downbeat original. Cinematographer Stephane Fontaine also gives the film a suitably dark beauty that enriches the narrative. Duris, who is virtually on screen the whole time, is impressive in a restrained performance as the central protagonist, and he imbues the tortured Tommy with a sensitive and timid edge that brings a poignant quality to the film.
***
Reviewed by PETER MALONE
An impressive drama. Jacques Audiard has made only a few films but they have been striking (A Self-Made Hero, Read My Lips). He has an intense visual style with lighting, close-ups and editing pace. This is to his advantage here as he draws a portrait of a complex young man.
Audiard sets the tone with a pre-credits discussion about father-son relationships, especially how antagonism can change to love, even dependence, when a strong father has to be cared for in every detail by his son. This conversation becomes more relevant as we see Tom, the protagonist, and his relationship with his own father. Both are in ‘real estate’, Tom and his cronies doing deals by ousting tenants and, especially, African squatters, from derelict sites that they want to buy and sell. His father is virtually a loan shark who wants his son to act as a tough collector (which he brutally does).
Tom’s dead mother, however, was a concert pianist and Tom has inherited some of her talent. Could he break through the thug side of his life to live for music and beauty? He tries, with the help of a recently arrived pianist from China. She speaks no French, but she manages to train him and develop his skills and his emotions. This cuts little ice with his colleagues. And, because, Tom is so self-absorbed, he elicits little sympathy from them. The climax-crunch for Tom is whether he is murderously vengeful for an attack on his father or whether he can be another kind of person.
Romain Duris (Exils, Arsene Lupin) gives a performance that brings to vivid life the complexities and contradictions of Tom’s character. Niels Arestrup is his father.
Remake usually means an American version of a European or Asian film. This time, Audiard has re-made an American film that influenced him when he was young, James Toback’s Fingers (1977) with Harvey Keitel as Tom and Michael V. Gazzo as his father. Toback’s film immersed us in a violent, even sleazy New York world, with a stoned Tom having to make his decisions. Audiard has broadened the screenplay, eliminated several of the sleazy characters but has re-produced some of the scenes exactly, especially Tom’s piano audition and his first and his final confrontation with the Russian mobster in a stairwell – but has altered the plot and character decision. With Toback we first see Tom playing the piano and are shocked when he turns out to be a thug. Here we see Tom’s brutality first and then are surprised to find he has a soul with his music.
This is an intelligent and challenging drama.