REVIEWED - THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED/ DE BATTRE MON COEUR S'EST ARRÊTÉ: Unusually, given the general trend towards US remakes of French productions, The Beat That My Heart Skipped is a French reworking of an American original: James Toback's first and best film as a director, Fingers (1978).
It's also the second remake this year from Paris-based Why Not Productions, which made the new version of Assault on Precinct 13.
Even more unusually, Jacques Audiard's film builds on the qualities of its source material, transposing its setting from New York to Paris and harnessing its themes and narrative elements into a dynamic and gripping morality tale. Following the remarkable achievements of his earlier A Self-Made Hero and Read My Lips, this arresting drama affirms Audiard as one of the most gifted writer-directors working in European cinema today.
Romain Duris wholly immerses himself in the role of the protagonist originally played by Harvey Keitel. The film acutely charts the conflicts in his character, Thomas, an unscrupulous and vicious enforcer hired by his slumlord father to evict immigrants, and who dabbles with equally amoral colleagues of his own in shady property dealings.
But there is another side to Thomas, who has inherited the musical ability of his late mother, a concert pianist. A chance encounter with her agent prompts Thomas to revisit ambitions he had put aside 10 years earlier, when he was 18. His new routine alternates between administering violent beatings to squatters and taking piano lessons from a serenely patient Chinese immigrant, a Beijing Conservatory graduate who barely speaks French.
Duris is hypnotically edgy and unexpectedly touching, playing Thomas as a young man coiled up with nervous energy and frustration and forced towards a turning point in life when his parallel paths collide. Building to a powerful conclusion, Audiard's vigorous and immensely stylish film is an object lesson in remaking a quality film, ultimately transcending the achievements of an original that still stands in its own right.
Michael Dwyer
