De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté
Tags: revenge, murder, violence

Plot synopsis:
Intense young "tough" Thomas Seyr is a 28-year-old real estate broker involved in shady business deals. His business partners, Fabrice and Sami, spend much of their time ruthlessly chasing squatters and illegal immigrants out of the buildings they have procured and trying to work their way around government housing regulations. Thomas is born to this kind of work; his father, Robert, is also involved in dodgy enterprises and sometimes calls upon Thomas to beat up people who refuse to pay. Tom shows a protective and defensive attitude toward his father who doesn't always appreciate what his son does for him – so much so that when his father introduces his new girlfriend to Tom, Tom undermines her to her face, and insults her to his father, insisting she is an opportunistic "whore." Later, when he tries to enlist her help to watch over his father, she tells him they broke up due to Robert changing his attitude and she is aware of Tom's backstabbing because Robert told her. Robert by this time is in danger from a Russian gangster, Minskov (Anton Yakovlev) who scammed him out of 300,000 Euros and Tom is worried for his safety.
Tom chances upon his late mother's manager, his mother having been a concert pianist until she died 8 years previously. The manager remembers him playing something when he was 20 years old, and invites him to audition for him. The opportunity rapidly takes over Tom's imagination, becoming an obsession. He finds a teacher newly emigrated to France, virtuoso Miao Lin, to help him prepare for the audition. She speaks only Chinese, Vietnamese and some English, but no French. Tom misses appointments and drops assignments while practicing piano around the clock, and having an affair with the wife of one of his promiscuous business partners. Finally Tom reaches the high standards of his teacher, but he falls apart at the audition, having stayed up all night helping his partners with a business deal. He goes to see his father only to find the apartment destroyed and his father murdered. Tom is devastated.
Two years later: Tom tests a piano onstage and gives directions to the stage manager. He drives Miao Lin to the concert hall and parks the car, when he chances to see Minskov. He follows Minskov, and takes him by surprise waiting for an elevator. They fight in the stairwell, Minskov almost shooting Tom. Tom gains the upper hand and tries to use Minskov's own gun against him, but cannot pull the trigger. Tom washes in the restroom and takes his seat in the concert hall, knuckles and shirt bloody, exchanging affectionate glances with Miao Lin at the piano. He is evidently Miao Lin's manager and partner.

Review: Then one day he spots his deceased mother's old music agent who offers him an audition in gratitude (Tom's mother was a professional concert pianist).What follows is an intriguing and humorous plot line as Tom takes on a piano coach (from Beijing no less) and tries to regain his affinity with the piano almost ten years after he'd stopped playing.Extremely well-acted film with Romain Duris (as 'Tom') offering up one of those rare performances that's absolutely mesmerizing (most USA audiences will remember him from "L'Auberge espagnole" - another French film worth your time!)..
Without stopping his usual work he tries to prepare an audition.Based on a flop more admired in France than the US, James Toback's 70's Harvey Keitel vehicle about a violent would-be pianist, "Fingers," this compulsively watchable, thrillingly accomplished new movie by Jacques Audiard ("De Battre mon cur s'est arrêté", still showing in Paris as it opens here) echoes his previous compellingly offbeat "Read My Lips" in grafting together two separate moral universes.
Like Scorsese and De Niro in Taxi Driver, Audiard and Duris conspire to create a memorable study of a low-life seeking to emerge from the slime, though this time the low-life is armed with talent and confidence, and seems maybe capable of turning his dire situation around.The low-life, Thomas Seyr, is a real-estate broker who's involved in all sorts of shady business deals; he and his slimy partners, Fabrice (Jonathan Zaccai) and Sami (Gilles Cohen), spend much of their time chasing squatters out of the buildings they've procured (planting rats in their room is a favorite tactic), and trying to work their way around government housing regulations (when a group of homeless come to take up residence in one of their tenements they hurriedly smash everything, rendering the rooms uninhabitable; the script seems to be taking advantage of certain sore social issues here).
Thomas might be a fun guy and a loyal friend (his loyalty is one of his failings), but you just know that sooner or later life is going to blow up in his face.Audiard and writing partner Tonino Benacquista have smoothly transplanted the plot of James Toback's '70s cult item Fingers (which starred Harvey Keitel), and tweaked it to make it work in modern-day France.
Audiard has a feel for the natural energies his actors give off; he taps into Duris's nervous charm, the nagging inadequacy of Niels Arestrup as Thomas's nuisance of a father, the radiant stillness of Linh Dan Pham as Miao Lin. This is one director who makes good movie-making seem easy, rather than making it seem hard on purpose so people will appreciate it more.
THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED (Jacques Audiard - France 2005).It's usually the other way round, but this time the French took a shot at remaking an American film, James Toback's FINGERS (1978), which starred Harvey Keitel.
This riveting human drama by Jacques Audiard features an impressive performance by Romain Duris as Tom, a 28 year-old hoodlum who seems destined to follow in his father's footsteps as a property shark working in a sleazy, barely legal twilight zone of the dodgy Parisian real-estate world.
Mr. Audiard directed the French version.As a character study of Thomas, the film somewhat succeeds in presenting his ambivalence as a petty criminal and as a frustrated pianist that is trying to regain his skill in playing the instrument.
Most of the motivation in Thomas' actions is driven by his loyalty to his small crook father, who is constantly nagging him to take care of the old man's criminal activities as well.In Romain Duris, director Audiard gets a multi layered performance that is what keeps the film going.
It tells the story about a 28-year-old man named Thomas Seyr who works as a kind of real estate broker in Paris, France for his gangster father named Robert whom is getting remarried to a model named Christine.
Following his mother's footsteps and distancing himself from his father's lifestyle, Thomas starts taking piano lessons with a pianist named Miao Lin.Distinctly and precisely directed by French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, this finely tuned fictional tale which is narrated mostly from the protagonist's point of view, draws an intimate and profound portrayal of a relationship between a French man and a Vietnamese woman who's communication is somewhat limited by their differing languages.
While notable for it's naturalistic and atmospheric milieu depictions, sterling cinematography by French cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine and use of music, this character-driven and narrative-driven psychological drama depicts a consistently involving and multifaceted study of character where the main character's inner struggle and mastering of his emotions interrelates with the narrative's continuity and contains a great score by French film composer Alexandre Desplat.This romantic, humorous and dramatic story about a young man who is driven by his passion for women and a constant duality within him, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, abrupt editing, incisive depiction of interpersonal relations, the versatile acting performance by French actor Romain Duris, the efficiently understated acting performance by Vietnamese-born French actress Lin Dan Pham and the fine acting performance by French actor Niels Arestrup.
Winner of eight César awards including best film and best director, Jacques Audiard's The Beat That My Heart Skipped is a loose remake of James Toback Fingers starring Harvey Keitel.
In Fingers, Keitel plays the son of a gangster and a concert pianist who is torn between the efficiency of his father's profession and the passion of his deceased mother.The Beat That My Heart Skipped is shot with dark colors to create a mood of foreboding.
As I have said previously French films can either be very good or like this one where the director seems more concerned with an esoteric format to produce what is in the end nothing.The film starts with potential but degenerates into a series of angst that the main character is attempting to resolve.This leads to a very disjointed movie where nothing of consequence happens and the viewer is left to employ some form of rational to begin to understand the story line.
I believe that there is a cult of film making and watching that "like the Emperors new clothes" permeates the industry where begin,middle and end are inconsequential and there more avant Gard they appear the more they are accepted.Techniques are fine but they must be employed within the frame work of a genuine story told in believable format with the enjoyment or compulsion of the watcher paramount.It is fine line between puerile rubbish and this type of film but an attempt to relate to the masters of previous successful productions would lead to far more success than this banal attempt to be modernistic and yet void of real incident..
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.
Given the chance to dig deep into his potential of following in his mom's footsteps, he thought he could find joy in emulating his mother's success, but success always is the outcome of hard work, and plenty of frustrations along the way.With the help of a Chinese pianist (played by Linh Dan Pham), he sets himself a goal to be ready for an audition to set a new future for himself, and the classical music numbers greatly contrasts with Thomas' choice of Euro-techno music which he plays over his beautiful earphones, and I enjoyed prior to watching the movie, thanks to a friend who introduced me to Telepopmusik's Just Breathe, which was used.While juggling between real work, and his potential aspiration, things go awry with his love and sex life, when he falls for one of his friend's wife, and when his dad gets mixed up with and swindled by Russian gangsters.
An audio flashback has his teacher telling him, "The emotion is not very generous" and at the same time the film slips into a minor key as our emotional involvement with the character kicks in.Playing piano interferes with Thomas' being a total bastard, much to the annoyance of his colleagues who don't want him pussyfooting around with such a silly hobby, but the audience and Thomas sense a soul struggling to shine through his shitty persona and the amphetamine paced timeframe stops the movie from going gooilly sentimental.
The 2005 French film DE BATTRE MON COEUR S'EST ARRETE ("The Beat that My Heart Skipped") is director Jacques Audiard's remake of the obscure 1978 American film FINGERS.Thomas (Romain Duris) is a shady real estate developer in Paris, releasing rats in apartment blocks to drive out the residents, then buying up the property before they can move back in.
Perhaps these flaws were present in FINGERS, I don't know, though I do know that the remake that is DE BATTRE has 17 minutes of new scenes, mainly dealing with Thomas' work with his piano teacher.Regardless of its plot and the comparison to the original, what makes DE BATTRE an interesting effort in itself are the performances.
"De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté"(2005)...aka "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" written/directed by Jaques Audiard is a French remake of James Toback's cult movie "Fingers" (1978) with Harvey Keitel.
The film tells the story of a young man Thomas (Romain Duris) who is torn by two different sides of his personality - one dreams of becoming a virtuoso piano player and the other - a ruthless debt-collector and enforcer.
Romain Duris puts on an impressive performance as an apparently amoral landlord who finds his human side when he decides to revive his ambition to be a concert pianist.The drama unfolds nicely, with the would-be ivory-tinkler struggling to accommodate his day job (releasing rats to scare off unwanted tenants and suchlike) alongside his lessons with a teacher who speaks not a word of French.His father, another ruthless landlord, and his adulterous friend's wife also appear in subplots, but ultimately we are waiting to see if Duris's character can pull off an audition, or whether he will be sucked under by his clashes with debtors and rivals.The result, and the epilogue, provide interesting surprises, but this is not a film that fizzes with excitement or tension.
Film Review: "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" (2005)World-premiering at the "Berlinale" in February 2005 in its 55th edition, little did superior film festival "Cannes" know that up and coming auteur-director Jacques Audiard had been on the run for a precision script of supreme beats, alongside with his strong-beating leading actor Romain Duris, at age 30; together they had been creating an independent masterpiece following a man called Tom, a small-time metropolitan criminal with his fingers all over Paris, France to reach for advantages in daily budgetary needs and life-style, while his pounding, all vivid dream of playing the "Concert Piano" slowly slips away; as Tom's father, portrayed by always-authenticity supporting actor Niels Arestrup, knocks his son off his feet by begging him to drive-in money from real estate rent fall-outs as well as approving his new girl-friend as Tom quickly gears up his chances, putting his fate into his own hands by practicing the piano over hitting harder targets in Paris' street to night life.Cinematography by Stéphane Fontaine and production design keep their independence with hand-held camera manuveurs on close-to none-dressed, on-location sets, when director Jacques Audiard raises suspense as character tension points in thought-out script, especially with his leading man Tom, when his discipline at piano lessons and gentle, but short-lived love affairs with a best friend's girlfriend, all superb cast with further two female supports as actresses Linh Dan Pham and Aure Atika, withhold passion and desire not only with regard to leading actor Romain Duris, but also for the amazed spectre's eye, how well this 100-Minute-Editorial ingnited by editor Juliette Welfing flows; as producer Pascal Caucheteux entrusts his director completely in delivering throughout post-production by adding galvanizing scoring beats by composer Alexandre Desplat to finish off motion picture excellence.
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 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.
This is the story of a man who works as an enforcer within a building company but who also harbours the desire to resurrect his piano playing.Yes it sounds ridiculous but the lead actor does his best to play a modern James dean type role where you do care about whether he will recover his piano ability.There are nice cameos from this business partner's wife as well as his piano teacher.A couple of the scenes don't quite run as smoothly as most of the film but you definitely follow the path of this moody wanna-be musician trying to live the "2 lives" that he does.Worth watching if you like good dramas.
The Beat that My Heart Skipped focuses on Thomas Seyr (a top notch performance from Romain Duris), who has followed in his fathers footsteps and gone into business at the sleazy end of the property development market.
A chance meeting with his long dead mothers piano teacher brings new meaning to his life..Essentially it's a film about the age old Oedipus concept, as Thomas flits between the violent influence of his father and the artistic heritage of his mother.
But he soon learns that renewal and redemption are often easier to dream about than they are to achieve and that the life we choose early on is often the life we have to live with.In an unusual trans-Atlantic turnabout, "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" is actually a French remake of an American film (it's generally the other way around) - in this case, James Toback's 1978 "Fingers." Set in Paris, this is a subtle, low-keyed study of a man fighting the demons of his own personality while trying to turn around a life that has veered perilously off its original course.
'De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté' ('The Beat that my Heart Skipped') is another superb and delicate character-driven film from French writer/director Jacques Audiard ('Read My Lips') and his collaborator Tonino Benacquista.
A light of hope goes on in Thomas' psyche and he is lead to a Chinese immigrant pianist Miao Lin (Linh Dan Pham) who takes him on as a pupil to prepare him for his anticipated audition.As Thomas practices, his world of crime does not abate and he is intermittently pulled away from his passion for the piano by his old partners as well as his father's continuing need for his 'dirty services'.
From an opening monologue by a friend about filial responsibility, we see first his violent following in his father's foot steps, then his sudden epiphany as he is reminded of his mother's life.While Jacques Audiard, director/co-adapter, from James Toback's film "Fingers" (which I haven't seen) also crafted the twisty crime story "Read My Lips (Sur mes levres)," this is not a thriller but is reminiscent as a similar thug out of place in a white collar world who tempts another into it, this thug is tempted to fit into the high culture world.No wonder his mother "had fits", according to the subtitles, when married to his dad, who expects the son to threaten his deadbeat tenants, demanding more such physical proof of loyalty as the son confesses his re-immersion in classical music, that the dad frequently derogatorily refers to as the province of homosexuals.
The son's loyalty makes him committed to looking after his father but also makes him feel trapped and then, when a passion from his past re-emerges (in this case, an ambition to be a classical pianist), it causes conflict within him as he tries to decide which way to go in his life and also causes conflict with his father who disapproves of his ambition.Thomas Seyr (Romain Duris) is a 28-year-old Parisian real estate broker who works with his partners on property deals involving run-down apartments which they buy and sell off at a profit.
The film explores the conflicts between his day-to-day job, his problems with his randy father who eventually gets himself in too deep with the much bigger and more brutal gangsters, his business partners, and the young Chinese woman he eventually finds to teach him to play the piano on a level that can get him an audition for his dead mother's former manager.It's based on James' Toback's 27-year-old American film "Fingers" which starred Harvey Keitel and which is much admired; I haven't seen the original but its hard to believe that Keitel was any better in the central role than Romain Duris (a look-alike for a young Daniel Day-Lewis for all you Brit-fanciers out there), who offers brutality, insensitivity and arrogance in most of his daily life, but with an undercurrent of melancholy and self-doubt that makes him one of the most real characters I've seen on screen in a while.