The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté) (2005)
Wed, Jul 22, 2026./noise/movies | LinkDirector Jacques Audiard's feature immediately-previous to A Prophet (2009). For reasons unknown he and Tonino Benacquista thought the world needed a retooling of James Toback's early Harvey Keitel vehicle Fingers (1978) that I haven't seen.
Romain Duris leads as an implausible enforcer/real estate wheeler/dealer who semi-secretly pines to pay homage to his deceased concert-pianist mother by (wait for it) becoming a concert pianist. Father Niels Arestrup, far less robust here, tasks him with extracting funds from recalcitrant tenants. One of his business partners (Jonathan Zaccaï) uses their need to meet random people late at night as cover to cheat on his wife (Aure Atika); like several threads here the capricious revenge Duris takes for the imposition just dangles. His sessions with Vietnamese piano coach Linh-Dan Pham were full of promise but only once or twice really landed. I didn't feel any of the characters were especially well drawn.
The whole show is disjointed, more a series of occasionally-effective scenes that didn't add up to something with a point to make. The cinematography was often trying: jittery and of unclear purpose. But you can discern the shape of his next (and far more successful) project.
Roger Ebert: three stars and an inaccurate review. Stephanie Zacharek.
