The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)

Director

• Jacques Audiard

Starring

• Romain Duris
• Niels Arestrup
• Linh-Dan Pham
• Emmanuelle Devos
• Gilles Cohen

Last On

23:30-01:15 Thu 11th Dec 2008 105m
BBC4

Synopsis

Director Jacques Audiard's simmering remake of James Toback's 1978 crime drama Fingers transplants the action from New York to Paris. The earlier film had some implausible moments, as antihero Harvey Keitel considered turning his back on a life of crime to follow his dream of becoming a concert pianist. Here, it's much easier to accept Romain Duris as a man employed on the outlaw fringes of the real-estate business, who is torn between following his small-time crook father (Niels Arestrup) into crime and honouring the memory of his mother by becoming a concert pianist. Some may baulk at the lengthy passages in which the gifted but rusty Duris practises piano with patient Chinese tutor Linh-Dan Pham. But such interludes make his inevitable recourse to violence all the more shockingly wasteful.