The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)

Synopsis
A man finds his heart and soul torn between loyalty to his family and a need to be redeemed from his violent lifestyle in this powerful drama from France. Tom (Romain Duris) is a man in his early thirties who finds himself caught between two very different worlds. Tom loves music, and longs to have a career as a concert pianist; he also has talent, and is taking advanced music lessons from Miao-Lin (Linh Dan Pham). But Tom supports himself working as a collection agent for his father, Robert (Niels Arestrup), a mid-level gangster and loan shark, as well as helping Sami (Gilles Cohen) and Fabrice (Jonathan Zaccai), two of Robert's cronies who put together crooked real-estate deals. Tom's hair-trigger temper makes it easy for him to adapt to the violent life of a gangster's muscle man, but he wants to give his creative side a chance to grow, and struggles to get his skills in order for an audition with a concert promoter interested in his music. Tom is also walking on a wire with his employers by having an affair with Aline (Aure Atika), Fabrice's wife, and is forced to mediate a bitter feud between his father and a Russian gangster, Minskov (Anton Yakovlev). A remake of James Toback's acclaimed directorial debut, Fingers, The Beat That My Heart Skipped (aka De Battre Mon Coeur S'Est Arrêté) was nominated for the Golden Bear award at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide