“You’re not immortal anymore.”
From its opening scene, Jacques Audiard’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped declares itself as a movie about fathers and sons and the complex trajectories that relationship takes on over the course of a lifetime. The quoted line comes in the film’s first few minutes in a conversation between two guys in their 30s, or somewhere thereabouts. They’re far enough into life that they’ve begun to understand the toll time takes on everyone, while still being young enough that they aren’t locked into their current life paths. Whether they realize it or not is a different question.
I remember watching The Beat That My Heart Skipped back in 2005. I remember liking it, but as I popped in the Criterion blu-ray I realized I didn’t remember a single thing about it. It’s always a bit disorienting and exciting to revisit a movie under that circumstance. Especially as I’ve generally cooled on Audiard’s films over time. I wondered if my faint memory of liking the film would hold up on this viewing or if I would laugh at my younger self.
Frustratingly, as life tends to you, my reaction this time landed somewhere in the middle. For those who haven’t seen it, The Beat That My Heart Skipped follows Thomas (Romain Duris), a real estate broker whose main job is being the muscle for underhanded plots to get their business done. Thomas coerces people out of prospective buildings by unleashing bags of rats, collects delinquent payments, and other bits of dirty work his father, Robert (Niels Arestrup), tasks him with. Thomas and Robert meet in little cafes where Robert lays out marching orders for Thomas. He also introduces Thomas to his new love interest, someone Thomas can’t help but play head games with. Thomas is miserable, and it’s obvious that Robert is the source of much of his problems. But, he can’t bring himself to fully break from his father and pursue his own interests.
Robert is content to use Thomas as a pawn for his schemes, and with Thomas’ late mother out of the picture, Thomas is caught in the push-pull of wanting to help his dad and wanting his own life. But, he only knows how to do one of those things. The story deepens when Thomas has a run-in with his mother’s former manager. She was a concert pianist, and once upon a time Thomas played piano too. The manager encourages Thomas to come and audition for him, and this opens the door Thomas thought to be permanently closed. He begins practicing as much as possible, letting his day to day responsibilities fall by the wayside. He works with a teacher, Miao Lin (Linh-Dan Pham) who doesn’t speak any French. Thomas doesn’t speak any of the languages she does (Chinese, Vietnamese, English), so they can only communicate through the music.
The scenes between Thomas and Miao Lin are where the film comes to life. Thomas gets frustrated often, Miao Lin steers him back to the bench and the keys. She demonstrates the fluid movements he needs to master to loosen himself up for the music to really come to life. When he begins working with her, Thomas has a nasty cut on the back of his hand, an injury suffered while collecting money on his father’s behalf. Audiard captures that image a couple times, highlighting Thomas’ relationship to both parents in a simple, elegant image. Music, we come to learn, inspires and propels him, while the injury is a stark reminder of where life with his dad is likely to take him if he lets it.
I haven’t seen James Toback’s Fingers, which Audiard remakes here, but it’s easy to see why the material appealed to Audiard. From the Audiard films I’ve seen, the crime aspects of the story must have caught his attention. That part of the story provides the story with its dramatic stakes, but it’s the emotional side of the story that provides the real fireworks. Romain Duris plays Thomas as a highly combustible young man whose life can go any direction, if he lets it. We can see the internal torment running through Thomas plainly on Duris’ face. He’s explosive and electric, and that makes his dynamic with his co-stars spark. His scenes with Pham are great, the highlight of the movie, and their relationship is the reason the movie works as well as it does.
Thomas’ arc ends in a spot where he’s maybe not redeemed for his past, and maybe he’ll never be able to escape it. But, through the influence of his mother, Miao Lin, and music, he’s able to chart a new way forward. He isn’t immortal, but he’s found what he needs in order to make the most of the time he does have.
The highlight of Criterion’s special features for this release is a new, brief interview wherein Audiard talks about the challenges in remaking an American film in French and translating it across cultures while also looking for ways to improve what he saw as flaws in Toback’s film. Within that explanation he mentions that a particular aspect of casting and filming The Beat That My Heart Skipped opened up his filmmaking in a way that draws a straight line to last year’s exuberant, misbegotten Emilia Perez. He’s lively and I could’ve watched him go on about this film and his process for much longer. The set also comes with interviews with co-writer Tonino Benacquista and composer Alexandre Desplat. There is also deleted scenes (with commentary from Audiard), rehearsal footage, a press conference from the 2005 Berlin Film Festival, and an essay by film critic Jonathan Romney.
