The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté) is a film directed by Jacques Audiard, starring Romain Duris and Linh Dan Pham. Loosely based on Fingers by James Toback, it was released in 2005.

Thomas "Tom" Seyr is an angry young man. Having followed in his father's footsteps in the world of shady real estate deals, he hates himself for what his job makes him do, but he can't find the resolve to escape his father's influence. However, his late mother was a concert pianist, and he inherited from her a talent for classical music; one day, he chances upon her former impresario, and decides to reacquaint himself with the piano.

In order to practice, he takes lessons with a recently arrived Vietnamese woman pianist, Miao-lin, and gradually reawakens his long-dormant skills. But the world of fast and dirty money isn't one that can be easily left behind.

Tropes used in The Beat That My Heart Skipped include:
  • Adaptation Distillation: The Beat That My Heart Skipped takes the basic idea of Fingers and runs with it, leaving out much of the original film's material.
  • Anti-Hero: Tom starts out as a tortured, self-hating, violence-prone and not very likeable character.
  • Bilingual Dialogue: Neither Tom nor Miao-lin speaks a language that the other understands. He addresses her in French, and she in Vietnamese.
  • Calling the Old Man Out
  • Everybody Smokes: Apart from Miao-lin, everyone does.
  • Frying Pan of Doom: Tom uses it against a restaurant owner who owes his father money.
  • Heel Face Turn: Tom tries to redeem himself by turning to music.
  • Love Triangle: Tom has an affair with a friend's wife.
  • The Mafiya: Tom's father bites off more than he can chew when he gets involved with a Russian mobster.
  • Missing Mom: Tom's mother died ten years earlier. It is in part to reconnect with her memory that he starts practicing the piano again.
  • Peer Pressure Makes You Evil: Tom's friends are all involved in the same shady deals as he is, making it all the harder for him to leave that life.
  • Tall, Dark and Handsome: Tom. Well, not tall, but dark and handsome all right.
  • Titled After the Song: The film is named after a line in "La Fille du Père Noël", a song by Jacques Dutronc (which isn't featured in the soundtrack).
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