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The Beat That My Heart Skipped
Will Thomas still lead a life of crime and cruelty, just like his thuggish father, or will he pursue his dream of becoming a pianist?
10 May 1964, Puteaux, Seine [now Hauts-de-Seine], France
21 February 1983, Paris, France
22 July 1970, Brussels, Belgium
1973, Vietnam
8 February 1949, Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis, France
12 July 1970, Monte Estoril, Portugal
March 21, 2016
This violent film, which swept the Cesar awards (the French Oscars) this year, provides a nuanced portrait of a conflicted young man who can never completely break away from the dark world in which he has grown up.March 28, 2007
A gritty urban romance that touches on the various fascinating ways that music and psychological states of mind interact or clash in a dissonant and chaotic modern world.September 26, 2005
From its plot to its look, The Beat That My Heart Skipped is designed to express how it feels to be torn between two opposing worlds and passions.January 27, 2007
[Duris] is pure star quality: gloweringly sexy, hypnotically unstable and needy, combining rage and vulnerability in his handsome, delicate face.August 19, 2005
Audiard has wisely avoided the crime-movie clichés of Toback's Fingers, and if his film is not exactly naturalistic, it is steeped in a reality that makes it all the more compelling.September 29, 2005
None of this would work without Duris' simmering performance as Tom, a person who's struggling to find his true calling.July 29, 2005
Emotionally richer than Fingers, and there's nothing secondhand about Duris' performance.August 19, 2005
Audiard has a nice stride here, establishing Tom's world and then altering it with slow insistence.October 18, 2008
Relying on the enigmatic and sultry charisma of Romain Duris, The Beat My Heart Skipped is a mesmerising portrait of a man torn by two very different sides of his personality.September 28, 2006
Altogether, Audiard's movie hangs together better than Toback's: it's more coherent in its construction, far less arbitrary in its dialogue, and more plausible and considered in its characterisation.April 07, 2010
Niels Arestrup is striking as the hero's slumlord father.March 01, 2007
A riff that will provide great pleasures to those willing to sample a molto vivace remake of Toback's cinematic ode to torment and obsession.