Film Review
‘De Battre Mon Coeur S'est Aręte’:
Memorable and Artful Remake
By Alex Holachek (January
11, 2005)
Thomas Seyr (Romain Duris)
is a conflicted man. By day, the low-level Parisian crook makes
shady real estate deals. Clad in a leather jacket and rarely without
a cigarette, he maintains an air of studied nonchalance even when
dumping live rats into apartment buildings to scare away its inhabitants.
But when he’s by himself, this small time criminal has a secret:
he can’t keep himself from dancing to the techno music blasting
from his earphones. Even more inexcusably from the point of view
of his fellow tough guys (and more importantly for the plot of
the movie) he spends hours fervently developing his natural talents
on the piano.
The
viciousness of Thomas’s job and the refined artistry of his music
seem to be diametrically opposed, and indeed the presence of both
qualities
can be traced back to his dissimilar parents. His dead mother was
a concert pianist. His father (Niels Arestrup) is a bloated and
pathetic figure who no longer commands respect from the assorted
business owners and thugs who owe him money. He has to ask his
son to rough up those who are no longer willing to pay up, a task
that Thomas approaches with less and less enthusiasm as the movie
proceeds. At best, the influences of both father and mother exist
together in a sort of uneasy truce. Over the course of a tense
105 minutes, director Jacques Audiard guides
these disparate elements onto a gripping collision course.
The movie
is apparently a remake of the 1978 film Fingers starring
Harvey Keitel and directed by James Tovack. Roger Ebert, reviewing the newer film, says disapprovingly
that “there is nothing in this movie to match Toback's famous shot of Keitel crouched
naked behind a piano.” And indeed, there is no naked crouching
in The Beat My Heart Skipped, but I am having
trouble figuring out why exactly that is such a bad thing. The
characters seem so real because they act pretty much like people
act, and people generally do not hide behind a musical instrument
without clothes on. Instead, the characters are understated much
of the time, and when an actor laughs or cries, you totally buy
it. That subtle, decidedly guileless sensibility permeates the
film, which has no magnificent special effects or freakishly beautiful
Hollywood actors (though Duris, despite
appearing somewhat averse to the notion of personal hygiene, is
nonetheless quite attractive). The camera work is artful but simple.
But that’s not to say the movie is boring.
Before the final credits role, a major character takes a bullet to
the head,
there is a frenetic and very bloody fight conducted in a stairwell,
and more than one love affair takes place. Personally,
I found the tense piano audition to be most thrilling of all, but you
may disagree.
The
Beat My Heart Skipped is a memorable film that gives me hope
that movies can be both entertaining and intelligent.
The Beat My Heart Skipped was released some time in 2005 and is available now
on DVD. The movie is in French with English subtitles.
