“The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” opening today at the Landmark Bethesda Row and E Street Cinema, is the most unorthodox remake of the season: a French revamp of an American crime thriller, James Toback’scqeakishly distinctive “Fingers” (1978), which enjoys a shaky cult esteem at best.
Obviously, director Jacques Audiard, who brought something bracing and distinctive to crime thrillers a few years ago in “Read My Lips,” has declined to trade on the original Toback title. Even so, “Beat” is unmistakably the spawn of “Fingers,” and the Audiard variation suggests that improvement may not be feasible.
The Toback film concerned the Freudian temperamental split in a young mobster. Called Jimmy and played by Harvey Keitel, the character had adopted his father’s disreputable profession, loan-sharking. When not preoccupied with a life of crime and impulsive seduction, he remained guiltily drawn to his late mother’s loftier calling, classical piano. Jimmy had abandoned his own keyboard promise years earlier but he attempts to recover it, furtively practicing to prepare for an audition. This redemptive goal proved beyond his ability or willpower. Fatalism has something of a stranglehold on the material.
A comparatively younger actor, Romain Duris, becomes the Parisian reincarnation of Jimmy, called Tom Seyr. The criminal milieu is exotic enough to seem intriguing, since one rarely encounters French movies that dabble in mob influence on slum clearance and real estate speculation. Tom and his cronies specialize in menacing tenants in order to hasten demolition and sweetheart building projects.
A chance meeting prompts Tom to resume piano practice. He hires a coach who plays to an Audiard strong point, first evident in “Read My Lips”: She’s a woman who can barely communicate with her fuming, felonious pupil. Instead of deafness as the barrier, it’s language: Tom struggles to meet the exacting standards of an exquisite Asian, Linh-Dan Pham’s Miao-Lin, who speaks scarcely any French.
Although the relationship is meant to be redemptive, Mr. Audiard and his co-writer, Tonino Benacquista, need an epilogue to clarify the point. They can’t get the job done in the body of the script. It’s as if the love story took root off-screen. The language of music fails to finesse the elusive emotional harmonies in “My Heart Skipped.”
The movie is on firmer ground when Tom is absorbed in criminal errands or spontaneous campaigns of seduction. It’s the risk factor in sexual adventurism that appears to be his real avocation. He may even have a certain genius for it, judging from entertaining sequences with Aure Atika and Melanie Laurent as targets of opportunity.
Romain Duris has a stray wolf appearance that suits opportunism better than soulfulness. What goes begging, as it did years ago, is a persuasive sense of loss about the allegedly finer side of a split personality. The cerebral, heartfelt aspirations never jibe with the tawdry dynamics of original or remake.
**
TITLE: “The Beat That My Heart Skipped”
RATING:— No MPAA rating (adult subject matter occasional profanity, graphic violence and sexual candor)
CREDITS:rected by Jacques Audiard. Screenplay by Mr. Audiard and Tonino Benacquista, based on James Toback’s 1978 movie “Fingers.” Cinematography by Stephanie Fontaine. Production design by Francois Emmanuelli. Costume design by Virginie Montelcq. Music by Alexandre Desplatcq. In French with English subtitles.
RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes
B SITE: www.wellspring.com/thebeatcq
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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