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August 26, 2005 > Arts & Entertainment > Artistic passion lies at core of thrilling ‘Heart’

Artistic passion lies at core of thrilling ‘Heart’

By Ann Chou | For the Thresher

The new French film The Beat That My Heart Skipped is the type of movie that reminds unfulfilled summer moviegoers hope is not lost. French director Jacques Audiard’s new film, which plays like a noir thriller mixed with a compelling story of family, breathes life into a season of lackluster cinema.

L’Auberge Espagnole’s Romain Duris portrays Thomas Seyr, a 28-year-old real estate entrepreneur who spends his spare time cleaning up his father Robert’s dirty real estate deals. Robert (The Future is a Woman’s Niels Arestrup) has passed his prime and is becoming increasingly dependent on his son.

While Tom shows significant devotion, his contempt for his father grows as he explores his passion for the piano. His renewed desire to become a concert pianist, like his mother, draws him away from his father’s shady, violent world. Audiard, who provided an acute exploration of criminal life in Read My Lips, deftly articulates Tom’s conflict between his loyalty to his father and his own passion.

In pursuit of his musical career, Tom takes lessons from a Chinese pianist who has just moved to Paris and does not speak French. The verbal silence of these lessons, juxtaposed with the dizzying measures of a Bach toccata, leaves a tangible intensity in the scenes.

In addition to the piano’s Bach and Brahms, Berlin band Electrocute’s Kleiner Dicker Junge haunts audiences with computer-generated classical melodies and eerily fitting repetitive lyrics.

Audiard weaves electronic music on his headphones, the classical piano and the other songs from the film’s soundtrack to underscore Tom’s dual lives and set the sound against kaleidoscopic Paris to create a sleek and swanky facade for the dodgy underworld setting.

Sporting tousled black hair, a leather jacket and a crooked grin, Duris lights Tom’s character on fire. The Beat That My Heart Skipped is a re-make of James Toback’s schizophrenic drama Fingers, which starred Harvey Keitel. Hunched over his piano in his dark apartment, constantly tapping his fingers and humming with his headphones on, Duris gamely steps into Keitel’s shoes and provides a wrenching intensity.

Remakes rarely deserve to be so highly lauded, but The Beat That My Heart Skipped proves to be one of these rare few. Audiard and his star deliver threads of a hard gangster film and a tender story of a father and a son combined into a refreshing piece of French cinema amid a meager film season.

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