by SARAH ROWLAND

In this French remake of James Toback’s Fingers, director Jacques Audiard trades in New York grit for some lighthearted humour. But to peg The Beat That My Heart Skipped against the 1978 classic would be wrong. They are two fundamentally different approaches to the same story.

To wit, Toback’s protagonist, played by Harvey Keitel, is a totally insane thug/aspiring musician, who spends most of his time stalking a hooker. In contrast, Audiard’s leading man, played by Romain Duris, is an irresistible little scamp with panty-remover wit. And without giving too much away, Audiard’s last act is slightly more optimistic than Toback’s brainsplattering finale.

Set in Paris, Thomas (Duris) is a gangster-style realtor who buys dodgy warehouses for dirt-cheap with the sole intention of fast and profitable turnarounds. So if squatters happen to move in before he can resell his investment, he simply shows them the door with a baseball bat. His old man is an ageing slumlord who continuously guilt-trips his son into collecting overdue rent from tenants with whatever blunt object is available at the time.

Since it’s all he’s ever known, Thomas seems perfectly satisfied taking over the family business. But his complacency comes to an end when he bumps into his childhood piano teacher, who encourages him to audition for him. Out of practice, he hires a Beijing music student to tutor him. She can’t speak a word of French, and vice versa. Ergo, their communication is limited to sign language and screaming matches that neither one can understand. Tempers flare. Sparks fly. Ivories are tickled. And Thomas slowly realizes that beating his unwelcome tenants doesn’t hold a candle to pounding the keys.

Duris’s comic delivery is perfectly timed here—so much so that by the end of the Nouveau Cinéma screening people were shouting, “Bravo, bravo.” Everyone was in love with the French thespian, and so was I. That is until he came out on stage, wearing a silky, champagne-coloured pirate blouse.

But fashion sense aside, Duris is one romcom lead to watch for. It’s hard to imagine anyone else adding such sweet and vulnerable nuances to an otherwise revolting character.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped is now playing

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