In many ways this French film reminds me of "Good Will Hunting" and the old William Holden film "Golden Boy" combined--though it is far better than either of these previous films.Thomas (Romain Duris) is a very unsavory young man. His job is a sleazy one--he dispossesses squatters from apartments. In France, it is NOT easy to legally dispossess these folks--so Thomas and his thuggish friends beat the crap out of them or toss rats into the apartments to get the folks to leave. It seems that Thomas learned a lot from his ne'er do well father. However, hidden within is a part of his dead mother. The woman was a concert pianist and Thomas had this as his career goal as well. And, when Thomas happens to see his mother's old manager, the dream of being a respected pianist reignites within him. But just practicing the piano and improving his skills isn't enough- -he must decide if he wants to become respectable or remain a thug. Through much of the film, Thomas bounces back and forth between the two extremes. Where will Thomas eventually land?The film is much better than the other films mentioned because Thomas' journey wasn't fast and his change wasn't complete and magical. In the other films, the problem was just too black and white and the changes unrealistic. Here, however, with a better script and a really nice performance by Duris, you've got a really compelling film. My only reservation is that this is NOT a film for everyone--it's very violent, sexual and not a neat picture that follow the expected formula. Well worth seeing regardless.

The interviews included on the DVD release point up a central difficulty with this Jacques Audiard movie -it shouldn't have been made in the first place.He states that a producer approached him to do a remake, after that guy recently remade John Carpenter's ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. Rather than turn him down flat (or pitch a more original notion), Audiard acquiesced and chose of all things, James Toback's FINGERS to re-do Gallic style.OK, I don't like the concept of remakes, but given how old (and tiring) that whole debate is, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. But Audiard enlists a previous collaborator (Tonino Benacquista) to script with him, and we find out Tonino didn't like Toback's film at all, and didn't like the notion of remaking it.So far, so bad, but the coup de grace is both men asserting they've kept the themes and main character (Harvey Keitel's memorable pianist/gangster) but jettisoned the rest of FINGERS. Fine.Finished film annoyed me thoroughly and repeatedly. It would take more than 3,000 words (triple the IMDb limit) to catalog the missteps or downright cheats committed here, but I'll chronicle just the most alarming. Audiard lost me from the outset with the edgy, jittery hand-held camera -so corny now through overuse, and quite distracting. Midway through the film he has a lengthy conversation between star Duris and his partner in crime in which he switches to traditional over-the-shoulder reverse shot closeups. BUT, Audiard consistently crosses the center line and violates the most basic of editing rules (Filmmaking 101), causing their heads to bounce back and forth from left to right side with each cut. Total incompetence.Audiard's explanation of why he chose Duris to star (boiled down, it's "flexibility" in approaching a surface/external character) is OK. But Duris really wore me down, a boring, one-note and pointless performance. He's a big star in France, and suitably charming/sexy (I enjoyed the fluff that was HEARTBREAKER), but I don't see any acting chops there at all. His smugness on screen reminds me of that stand-up comic London Lee of 3 or 4 decades ago, whose routine was to smirk and make fun of how rich and wonderful he is (sort of the opposite or Rodney Dangerfield, turning self-deprecation humor on its head). Duris is in virtually every frame of Audiard's film -too much of a bad thing.The simplest of boy/girl relationships in BEAT MY HEART (now there's a better English-language title!) are bungled. When Duris professes out of nowhere his love to Aline, the wife he's been facilitating a colleague's cheating on, she hops into bed immediately, falling for that line. It's filmmaking on the level of late night skin-shows made for cable, a pernicious "short cut" to sex approach that has infected lots of movies and TV -take for example the silly, wham-bam sex sequences in the British TV turkey trilogy RED RIDING. Similarly, his having his way with the poor little Russian plaything of a gangster is ridiculous. And no more ridiculous than him finally confronting said gangster in a crudely done ("2 Years Later" card inserted as the height of bad script structure) and corny epilogue.I can't even get started with the hokey (but central) subplot concerning hero's dad Niels Arstrup. This is not just mediocre 21st Century filmmaking but meretricious slop. A film industry where remaking Toback movies is considered OK is artistically bankrupt.

I did not see yet the last film of Jacques Audiard 'Un Prophete' which enjoyed great success in Europe I did however have the opportunity to see now (from the ARTE TV channel) this previous film that he directed and my feeling is that I have met the work of one of the most interesting and complete directors in the French cinema today.It is usually the European cinema that comes with the original ideas and the American Hollywood industry that creates the remake, with lesser or greater success. Here the path is reversed. A film with a very similar theme about the son of a Mafia head trying to break with the family and with the life of crime in order to get back to the classical music making that was his childhood passion was 'Fingers' made in 1978 by James Toback with Harvey Keitel making one of his finest roles ever. Here with the action is transferred in the Paris of today, the main role is being taken over by Romain Duris, a fine actor who succeeds to make us believe in his character fighting an almost impossible fight for redemption and evasion from his milieu, and especially makes us care about him.Duris is supported by a team of actors which is best selected and do a great job - especially Niles Arestrup as the young man's father for whom he cares, and from whom he must escape in order to have any chance to find a new path in life, and Linh Dan Pham as the Chinese pianist who teaches the hero music lessons in the tentative to help him get back on the track of art, without knowing any French. The scenes between the two, one speaking French , the other Chinese (with no subtitles) and communicating only by mimic and especially by music are both dramatic and moving. It's a solid drama and a complex film, but never a complicated one, so it's a real thrilling cinema experience to watch it.

There cannot be too many incidences in which the Europeans have taken an American film and remade it with the considerable amount of success that The Beat That My Heart Skipped achieves. Off the top of my head, one European remake of an American film that springs to mind is 2001's Mean Machine, but that's pretty much where we'll stop with that particular example. The film combines that heartfelt feeling you get with that genre linked to the passing of time in one's life, be it a tragic or triumphant one with a careful study between the lead character and his father while incorporating elements of the crime and romance genres but retaining the subject of music at its very core.The film reminded me of Craig Brewer's 2005 film Hustle & Flow, that being about a criminal or one of society's lowlifes at best who uses music as not only a means of escape emotionally but as an escape literally when he decides to embark on a career as a songwriter-come-rapper. At the very centre of The Beat That My Heart Skipped is a character who I suppose we're to believe is full of musical talent and that talent is linked to the playing of the piano. But the talent goes seemingly wasted as the lead, Thomas (Duris), has his mother die at a very early age leaving him worse off than what he was. Very quickly, it seems, he must balance taking care of his father named Robert (Arestrup), a burden he talks about and introduces in the opening scenes, as well as his erratic and spontaneous job that frequently involves conflict with unknown elements.The film seems to be about nurturing but it carries a music related theme. Very early on, characters talk about having to take care of someone and the pros and cons that come with that. The dialogue is spoken by Thomas and he is referring to his father but he is someone who himself has neglected to nurture something else quite important; obviously not to him but certainly inside of him and that is the talent and interest in piano playing.Thomas' interest in music has evolved from his early years in life but it retains that consistency in the sense it is still instrumental music he is interested in, only it has changed from classical piano sonatras to contemporary electronic music. It is the feeling of moving on in one's life and in music from the past; retaining that joy we get from hearing a solid piece of music we enjoy but in an alternate form. Thomas' love for interacting with the music also lives on, he frequently plays out mock drum routines with his hands and wrists which I guess are meant to resemble his long since buried piano skills he bears with his fingers. Indeed, his father berates him for his choice in musical fondness in a scene more poignant that it first comes across as.Thomas' job is one I did not catch the specific title of but needless to say, he slithers from location to location in ominous fashion, rounding up squatters and unleashing vermin into particular apartment tenants whom are not exactly pleasing the housing firm he works for. The job is juxtaposed with the piano lessons he takes up following a chance encounter with his old teacher, whom convinces him to do an audition for him at a set date. The film's drama to do with these lessons spark from the fact he is retracing steps and being forced to confront demons of old. Listening to old tapes of himself playing for his mother are the scenes that hit home. Twinned with this, his Vietnamese teacher by name of Miao Lin (Dan Pham) doesn't speak his native French and the communication is patchy at best, creating not only the threat of potential confrontation but allowing the lead to interact with a member of the opposite sex.The film's spine revolves around Thomas trying to balance his own life with that of his father's. It's very true to say that his crime-orientated job along with his piano lessons and the threat on the horizon that is the audition work really well combined. In addition, his father is involved with a loose woman and the fact he is owed money from a shady Russian gangster just complicates things to the point it'll act as a huge catalyst for Thomas later on in the film.One of the film's crowning triumphs lies in it getting that last act just about spot on. There is a blend of optimism and tragedy as we are lead to believe he's one thing two years down the line but the success has come to somebody else and the ominous scenes of potential retribution are once again juxtaposed by scenes of piano playing and piano music. We get a fabulous performance out of Romain Duris who's playing a character one thing after being something else and then going back down a route similar to the one that made him what he once was. The blend of content and the hybridity of the genres complement one another rather than clash resulting in an often harrowing, often uplifting and mostly very engaging piece.