Andres-Camara Just start the movie, I know how it will end. It is a movie full of typical characters, the characters are drawn as by fifteen year old who make their first scripts.It is very long and the worst of all is that then it solves everything in two minutes, do not stop for so much film. If it were that the character is in progression could understand it but it is not progression, does not advance and then blow is another.The actors are fine that true. Although I do not think the casting is very well done, if we had a friend like that and he told us what happens to him in the movie, we would not believe him.The photograph of the film, if it exists, is too white. It is very French, no information.The address, telling me that I have become long, does not advance, only knows how to make close-ups, does not know how to narrate or compose, let's say I do not like it.In short, it is not what I expected, but I will soon forget it

Kirpianuscus it is a special film. for music, for story as a puzzle, for performance of Roland Duris who escapes from adultescence roles, and, sure, for its director vision. because it is only a confession about dream and about reality, need to escape from a circle for be yourself. brutal, violent and poetic. intense. and useful reflection of a state of soul and small things who define every day frustrations. the American cinema touch and the essence of French cinema - this could be the key of a beautiful film about a fight with precise target. and the motif for discover The Beat that my heart skipped as a kind of revelation about art. not new, not original but touching and profound. as sketch of a way to the truth. remembering French new wave, it is one of films who gives new perspectives about existence.

Christopher Culver The 2005 French film DE BATTRE MON COEUR S'EST ARRETE ("The Beat that My Heart Skipped") is director Jacques Audiard's remake of the obscure 1978 American film FINGERS.Thomas (Romain Duris) is a shady real estate developer in Paris, releasing rats in apartment blocks to drive out the residents, then buying up the property before they can move back in. He is torn between this dishonourable profession like his scumbag father (Niels Arestrup) and a career as a concert pianist like his late mother. Seeking a way out of his violent lifestyle, he hires a Vietnamese pianist (Linh Dan Pham) to help him reach a professional level, and though they share no common language, it proves a fruitful partnership.Though the story remains powerful for much of its length, things seem somewhat rushed towards the end. It is suggested that character of Thomas' father's ex-girlfriend will play a major role, but then she disappears. And the ending itself, which I won't give away, is an ambiguous statement about whether Thomas has found peace with himself or not. Perhaps these flaws were present in FINGERS, I don't know, though I do know that the remake that is DE BATTRE has 17 minutes of new scenes, mainly dealing with Thomas' work with his piano teacher.Regardless of its plot and the comparison to the original, what makes DE BATTRE an interesting effort in itself are the performances. Many viewers will have known Romain Duris only from his turn as the innocent European manchild Xavier in 2000's L'AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE and its sequels. Here, however, Duris convincingly plays his occasionally villainous role and keeps up the nervousness of a man who can't find a way out.The film's soundtrack is an unusual mix of obscure pop, classical piano, and (Tom's personal favourite) the electro genre that exploded in 2005. The film music by Alexandre Desplats won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2005.

lor_ The interviews included on the DVD release point up a central difficulty with this Jacques Audiard movie -it shouldn't have been made in the first place.He states that a producer approached him to do a remake, after that guy recently remade John Carpenter's ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. Rather than turn him down flat (or pitch a more original notion), Audiard acquiesced and chose of all things, James Toback's FINGERS to re-do Gallic style.OK, I don't like the concept of remakes, but given how old (and tiring) that whole debate is, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. But Audiard enlists a previous collaborator (Tonino Benacquista) to script with him, and we find out Tonino didn't like Toback's film at all, and didn't like the notion of remaking it.So far, so bad, but the coup de grace is both men asserting they've kept the themes and main character (Harvey Keitel's memorable pianist/gangster) but jettisoned the rest of FINGERS. Fine.Finished film annoyed me thoroughly and repeatedly. It would take more than 3,000 words (triple the IMDb limit) to catalog the missteps or downright cheats committed here, but I'll chronicle just the most alarming. Audiard lost me from the outset with the edgy, jittery hand-held camera -so corny now through overuse, and quite distracting. Midway through the film he has a lengthy conversation between star Duris and his partner in crime in which he switches to traditional over-the-shoulder reverse shot closeups. BUT, Audiard consistently crosses the center line and violates the most basic of editing rules (Filmmaking 101), causing their heads to bounce back and forth from left to right side with each cut. Total incompetence.Audiard's explanation of why he chose Duris to star (boiled down, it's "flexibility" in approaching a surface/external character) is OK. But Duris really wore me down, a boring, one-note and pointless performance. He's a big star in France, and suitably charming/sexy (I enjoyed the fluff that was HEARTBREAKER), but I don't see any acting chops there at all. His smugness on screen reminds me of that stand-up comic London Lee of 3 or 4 decades ago, whose routine was to smirk and make fun of how rich and wonderful he is (sort of the opposite or Rodney Dangerfield, turning self-deprecation humor on its head). Duris is in virtually every frame of Audiard's film -too much of a bad thing.The simplest of boy/girl relationships in BEAT MY HEART (now there's a better English-language title!) are bungled. When Duris professes out of nowhere his love to Aline, the wife he's been facilitating a colleague's cheating on, she hops into bed immediately, falling for that line. It's filmmaking on the level of late night skin-shows made for cable, a pernicious "short cut" to sex approach that has infected lots of movies and TV -take for example the silly, wham-bam sex sequences in the British TV turkey trilogy RED RIDING. Similarly, his having his way with the poor little Russian plaything of a gangster is ridiculous. And no more ridiculous than him finally confronting said gangster in a crudely done ("2 Years Later" card inserted as the height of bad script structure) and corny epilogue.I can't even get started with the hokey (but central) subplot concerning hero's dad Niels Arstrup. This is not just mediocre 21st Century filmmaking but meretricious slop. A film industry where remaking Toback movies is considered OK is artistically bankrupt.