Fridae

Remakes of English movies into a film of a foreign language are much rarer than the reverse, and this re-imagining of James Toback's 1978 film Fingers manages to do the job very well, an even rarer achievement.

It tells the story of Thomas (Romaine Duris), a twenty-something real estate broker, whose job includes evicting vagrants from the properties that his bosses want to sell, and this includes anything from sneaky tactics to brute force. Thomas is following in his father's footsteps, and to top it all off, he is secretly in love with his business partner's wife.

A chance encounter allows Thomas to come to terms with his love for classical music and playing the piano, and he seeks out the services of Miao Lin (Linh-Dan Pham), a Vietnamese immigrant who knows how to play the piano but does not understand the French language at all. Thomas' obsession with playing the piano grows, he finds himself increasingly straddled between two very different worlds, and unsure of which one he truly belongs to.

Romaine Duris puts forth a very strong performance as Thomas, and the supporting cast is uniformly excellent. Although the film can be violent, the true centre of the movie is the relationship between Thomas and Miao Lin, which is extremely compelling to watch. Although The Beat that My Heart Skipped may be a less mainstream film, being a foreign film, and a departure from “normal” French movies, it is one of the better films that are released this week.