The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Compelling and heartwarming (especially if one loves the instrument), Audiard is perhaps the most interesting and one of the best contemporary french filmmakers, the guy can aim a fucking camera, put a scene together, and make you care about the characters involved. He's fastly becoming my favorite french filmmaker. Do yourself a favor and watch "A Prophet" aswell.

Solid flick which doesn't really come together as well as it should have, the narrative never extending beyond the curious paradox of a pianist henchman. Where Audiards film excels is with its cinematography. Not only are the scenes nicely lit and framed, the uses of tracking shots and closeups with the background completely out of focus were ace.

A fairly good film. Duris' character is nervous, intense, and hard to sympathize with - but played brilliantly nevertheless.

Jacques Audiard is without a doubt my favorite contemporary French director. Here, like in A Prophet, you find the same richness of gritty tone, choice music selection, and unique characterization. Audiard's heroes are forced to struggle through their ugly environments to attain the innocence and peace that they know rests in their souls. They are not good men, but on some level they desire to be just that, and their journeys are utterly captivating. The piano stuff in this is just wonderful.

This is as near to a masterpiece as anything I've seen in a long, long time. Passionate, powerful and emotionally devastating. The performances are astounding and Jacques Audiard's screenplay is flat out incredible. One of the finest French films I've seen, and an instant favourite.

Meandering, frustrating film is saddled from the outset with an unlikable (and inscrutable) leading character, which makes it difficult to become wholly invested in the film as a whole, despite the fine performances (Arestrup in particular is a delight in his brief scenes as Duris' father). Beautifully crafted however, with scenes of sudden, jarring violence particularly well staged and executed.

Absolutely captivating and uplifting cinema. On a pivotal night in my young life, this cinema trip was just exactly what I didn't know I needed - both catharsis and catalyst. I left that darkened theatre somewhat transformed, and immediately empowered to tackle the problems facing myself and my friends.

Stunning lead performance, as the lead character gets slowly revealed while his alienation towards the world art large transforms into an alienation from his underworld escape. It's full of great moments and excellent energy. It does feel like there's a lynchpin missing, something to give everything, particularly the ending, the extra weight to raise it to greatness but it's still wonderful.

Brilliant.

Fine performances, superb cinematography, with a unique twist on the gangster(ish) story. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Romain Duris is amazing here. The film is full of moments of insight, interest and intensity as Audiard takes material that could have easily come off as obvious but manages to take it in such a direction that it is instead intelligent and emotionally compelling. Great stuff.

A young thug must choose between violence and art while keeping his day job

79.000

3 Juny 2013? - Molt fluixa, decebedora, simple, artificial. Personatges buits i esquemàtics.

Fransa, emlak mafyasi, rus mafyasi, piyano, piyanist, aldatmak, vietnamli, baba-ogul, intikam (Thomas Seyr emlak isindedir. insanlari zorla evlerinden cikarma gibi bir görevi vardir. Müzige de icten ice bir ilgisi vardir. Annesinin menejeriyle tanisir. Menejer bir demo icin kendisine söz verir. İsiyle tutkusu arasinda kalan Thomas'in öyküsüdür. Arkadasinin karisiyla iliskisi olur. Vietnamli bir ögrenciden ders alir. Babasi rus mafyasinca öldürülür. Finalde intikam icin sansi olur) Fena dii

Duris is astonishing, full of coiled energy, as the slum-lord gangster who feels the pull of his love for the piano. While the opposition of the two worlds may have been a little too neat, the film is satisfying.

"The optimistic flip-side to James Tobak's Harvey Keitel-headlined Fingers." - Nick Schager

This may sound pretty similar to the James Toback film "Fingers", and they are very similar but while that film was full of crazed energy, this is more of a downbeat character study. Duris holds this film together with a charismatic, multi-layered performance.

Very well written and made and incredibly nervous. Duris turns out a most angst-ridden performance. Audiard shows his knack for combining tense crime stuff with persuasive character drama, which not a lot of filmmakers can do. Some resent its debt to James Toback's "Fingers" but I like it just as much.

The best remake ever. In Audiards masterpiece Romain Duris reinvents acting to a form, which is so unbelievably real that it reduces all other performances to imitations of static mannequins.

This character is abhorrent, but also completely compelling. Superb acting all round.