Review by © Jane Freebury
The world of real estate doesn’t seem to lend itself to cinema particularly, though it worked well enough for Glengarry Glen Ross, and Annette Bening sent it up wittily in American Beauty too. In this new film from French director Jacques Audiard and screenwriter collaborator Tonino Benacquista it presents one of two life choices, whether to stay in property or move over to the sublime world of classical music. The problem for the movie is how to get there.
A young Parisian calls himself a broker but he really operates as a debt collector and an evicter, with a kit bag of rats and baseball bats to chase squatters from rental apartments. The hardman role of Tom is new for Romain Duris, who’s usually seen in amiable roles in films like Gadjo Dilo and The Spanish Apartment, but he certainly rises to the occasion.
In a chance encounter with his late mother’s musical agent, it becomes clear there’s another side to him. Techno might fill his head while out and about, but at home he plays recordings of the work of his mother, a classical concert pianist, and he’s beginning to want to play again himself after a 10-year break.
A young Vietnamese woman recently arrived in Paris becomes his teacher. It is a challenging relationship, as the few words they share are English, which also happens to be the language Tom uses when he is at his most threatening as an enforcer.
Tom’s affair with Miao-Lin develops off screen, but the core relationship in The Beat My Heart Skipped is really between fathers and sons. Tom has two life choices – whether to follow his father’s dangerous occupation as a wheeler and dealer or to pursue a life in music.
Jacques Audiard’s last film Read My Lips was a brilliant contribution to the tradition of French thrillers with convincing characters and great style, though The Beat My Heart Skipped doesn’t reach quite the same heights. Romain Duris as Tom, one-part gangster one-part artist, is tortured and riven and The Beat is made with real flair but it doesn’t satisfactorily resolve the problem it sets itself.
I haven’t seen the Harvey Keitel original, Fingers, on which this is based, but maybe that movie was more convincing at finding a way for its protagonist to shed skins and find another way.
3.5 stars