An overlooked gem of recent French cinema
While nearly everyone has seen Amélie (Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain) (2001), and probably, like me, has gone through their Audrey Tautou phase, there are so many excellent French films which are overlooked and forgotten by viewers and critics alike. Have you seen The Intouchables (2011), A Prophet (2009), or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)? There is always room for questions of personal taste, but these three French films and many more deserve more attention than they deserve.
Today, though, I specifically want to shine a light on The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005), directed by Jacques Audiard and starring Romain Duris. This film is a gripping French drama which tells the story of Tom, a young man torn between his criminal lifestyle and his dream of becoming a concert pianist. While it isn’t a conventional Jekyll and Hyde story, it plays with the tension of a life lived between roles too contrasted, too at odds with one another, for it to be sustainable.
Romain Duris’s Oscar-nominated performance as Tom is truly worthy of admiration due to the real complexity of emotion he brings to the role. I haven’t always been a fan of Duris (and my most frequent feeling when I see him in a comedy is an urge to see him thrown off a bridge over the Seine), but here he manages to capture and give substance to the inner struggle of a young man…
