Watch The Beat That My Heart Skipped For Free

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Best movie of this year hands down!

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

French screenwriter and director Jacques Audiard's fourth feature film which he co-wrote with French author and screenwriter Tonino Benacquista, is a remake of American filmmaker James Toback's narrative feature "Fingers" from 1978. It premiered In competition at the 55th Berlin International Film Festival in 2005, was shot on location in Paris, France and is a French production which was produced by producer Pascal Chaucheteux. It tells the story about a 28-year-old man named Thomas Seyr who works as a kind of real estate broker in Paris, France for his gangster father named Robert whom is getting remarried to a model named Christine. Whilst spending most of his time with his friend Fabrice who is depending on him as an alibi to cover up for is numerous affairs and becoming infatuated with his friend's wife, Thomas decides to revive a talent he stopped practicing ten years ago. Following his mother's footsteps and distancing himself from his father's lifestyle, Thomas starts taking piano lessons with a pianist named Miao Lin.Distinctly and precisely directed by French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, this finely tuned fictional tale which is narrated mostly from the protagonist's point of view, draws an intimate and profound portrayal of a relationship between a French man and a Vietnamese woman who's communication is somewhat limited by their differing languages. While notable for it's naturalistic and atmospheric milieu depictions, sterling cinematography by French cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine and use of music, this character-driven and narrative-driven psychological drama depicts a consistently involving and multifaceted study of character where the main character's inner struggle and mastering of his emotions interrelates with the narrative's continuity and contains a great score by French film composer Alexandre Desplat.This romantic, humorous and dramatic story about a young man who is driven by his passion for women and a constant duality within him, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, abrupt editing, incisive depiction of interpersonal relations, the versatile acting performance by French actor Romain Duris, the efficiently understated acting performance by Vietnamese-born French actress Lin Dan Pham and the fine acting performance by French actor Niels Arestrup. A poetic, heartfelt and memorable thriller-drama which gained, among other awards, the award for Best Film Not in the English Language at the 59th BAFTA AWARDS in 2005.

Jacques Audiard once again shows his mastery for exploring morally conflicted characters within a criminal world where the wicked succeed and the decent are thrown in the mud. In Read My Lips and A Prophet he gave us characters that tried to prevail in this world while still keeping their soul in tact, but here he does quite the opposite. Thomas Seyr doesn't try to prevail through crime; he treats it just like he would any other job. The real story for him, what he really strives toward, is becoming a pianist. This is such a beautiful and unique approach to this story and I knew almost instantly that I was going to get attached to this guy. When he's smashing windows and threatening people with a baseball bat, he stands almost in a daze, completely dulled by his surroundings as if it's just any other day. It's when he gets behind the piano that he comes alive, with all of the wonder and fear that comes with that.Actor Romain Duris and Audiard really make you feel every emotion that goes through Seyr during these scenes. The frustration when he gets something wrong, the anxiety when he's auditioning for a manager and the pure unadulterated bliss that comes when he just stops and lets his love for music flow over him. Audiard again proves his knack for beautifully staging certain scenes, this is shown in particular with all of the musical moments in the film. He also does this thing that he did in A Prophet where he distorts the image when some very beautiful moments are happening and it makes you take even more notice that something truly special is happening currently; be it for good or for bad. Everything with Seyr's love for the piano is what sold the film for me, but I thought that the romantic subplots were remarkable as well.Everything with his friend's wife was endlessly fascinating and let Audiard shed some great light onto themes of lust, betrayal, deceit and selfishness; the kind of possession and anarchy that can come with love. But what worked the most for me was the dynamic between Seyr and Miao Lin, his piano teacher who is also a Chinese immigrant that doesn't speak a word of French. The two of them together, thanks primarily to the performances from Duris and Linh Dan Pham, don't understand a word that the other is saying but somehow they are able to convey this kind of puppy-dog love that they slowly develop. Through the highs and lows of their dynamic they never understand a word that the other is saying but somehow they still know exactly what the other means. It's really beautiful to watch and further explores that theme of love that Audiard sets up to run underneath the whole story.The audition scene is staged extraordinarily and really hit me a lot emotionally, but what's even more impressive is how Audiard stages the final scene of the picture. Trying to talk about it could definitely veer into spoiler territory, so I'll avoid that just by saying that it was a moment made of palpable tension and Audiard really hammered this theme that the person you are sticks with you no matter what you try to do. You can escape your life, but the past will always come back and there are parts of you that can just never stayed bury forever. Somehow it will come back out.

"From Jacques Audiard, the acclaimed filmmaker," notes the DVD sleeve, "comes this haunting new thriller that fuses two unlikely worlds to create a stunning portrait of a young gangster. Romain Duris, in a standout performance, plays Tom, a 28-year-old who seems destined to follow in his father's footsteps as a Parisian property shark working in a sleazy and sometimes brutal world. However, a chance encounter with his late mother's music agent leads him to believe that he can become, like his mother, a concert pianist. In earnest, he starts preparing for the audition with the help of a beautiful, young virtuoso pianist who has just arrived from China. She doesn't speak a word of French; music is their only exchange. But pressures from the ugly world of his day job become more than he can handle…" Strange how this film has found its way into my hands before the original, US-made "Fingers" (1978), starring Harvey Keitel; more often, the American re-make of a French film predominates. Probably, the reason is that Mr. Audiard's version was immediately acclaimed as the latest work from a superior director. Re-titled "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" for English readers, this is a nicely performed character-driven crime drama. Twitching and quivering, Mr. Duris is especially memorable as the unhappy degenerate who yearns for respectability through musicianship. Unfortunately, the "shaky camera" technique gets out of hand sometimes, distracting during a couple of scenes; mostly, the wobbling stays in the realm of a sway or bounce - even when the characters are not, of course. C'est la vie.******* De battre mon coeur s'est arrete (2/17/05) Jacques Audiard ~ Romain Duris, Niels Arestrup, Linh-Dan Pham, Aure Atika

With the huge success of his A Prophet as last year became this, it's worth a detour through Jacques Audiard's back catalogue. The cryptically titled The Beat My Heart Skipped concerns come of the same themes that made A Prophet a tense - and epic - cinematic tale. Romain Duris is a temperamental young wheeler-dealer in Parisian real estate, fluent, if not happy with the murky aspects of his trade. Serendipity produces a remarkable plot diversion: offered an audition by a former piano teacher, he begins lessons with a Chinese girl who speaks no French, and finds the process emancipates him from the tawdriness of his day-to-day.Naturally the drama builds as the civilising effect of his extracurricular pursuit and that very job come into conflict. I liked the way in which Audiard managed this though. I also liked the way in which he dealt with the pianism within the film. This is a notoriously tricky area, introducing music or sport, events which have their own inherent drama. The non-Francophone teacher is a brilliant conceit in this respect - since we do not understand the Chinese (non subtitles) the drama moves from dialogue about the piano to the physicality of the exchanges between the characters.Of course, so much more revolves about this - like El Djebena, much of the drama comes from expecting Thomas to drop one of the many balls he's juggling - women, providing alibis for adulterous friends, the fractious relationship with his passée-thug father. A nice selection of supporting roles, from the wonderful Niels Arestrup as said dead-beat papa to the echt Parisian beauty Aure Atika as Aline maintain the verisimilitude easily enough. This is Duris' picture though. He performs with such a convincing equivocation that there is no second- guessing the script and we feel sympathy even in his foolhardiness and violence. A very good, if (also characteristically) rather pessimistic film. 7/10