The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Jacques Audiard's remake of James Toback's Fingers (1978). The premise is the same: a man who collects debts for his father, beating people when required, and a piano left by his dead mother. Tom works in property; his job is clearing tenants, releasing rats into buildings, threatening when necessary. Then he runs into his mother's old manager in the street and the idea of becoming a concert pianist returns. He starts working with a teacher newly arrived from China who speaks no French; the two barely talk, they only play. Its strength is that it refuses to make him choose: Tom does not pick one of the two lives and shed the other, he tries to carry both in the same body, and the hands are used for the piano and for the violence alike. Romain Duris plays Tom, Niels Arestrup the father and Linh Dan Pham the teacher. It won eight Césars in 2006, including best film and best director. Who it is for: viewers who want Audiard's hard character drama and Duris's physical work in this part. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a sympathetic lead. Tom does not regret what he does and the film does not absolve him; the women, too, are kept markedly at the edges.