This violent film, which swept the Cesar awards (the French Oscars) this year, provides a nuanced portrait of a conflicted young man who can never completely break away from the dark world in which he has grown up.
Emotionally richer than Fingers, and there's nothing secondhand about Duris' performance.
Long Island Press
March 28, 2007
A gritty urban romance that touches on the various fascinating ways that music and psychological states of mind interact or clash in a dissonant and chaotic modern world.
Detroit News
August 19, 2005
Audiard has a nice stride here, establishing Tom's world and then altering it with slow insistence.
Detroit Free Press
August 19, 2005
Audiard has wisely avoided the crime-movie clichés of Toback's Fingers, and if his film is not exactly naturalistic, it is steeped in a reality that makes it all the more compelling.
Sight and Sound
September 28, 2006
Altogether, Audiard's movie hangs together better than Toback's: it's more coherent in its construction, far less arbitrary in its dialogue, and more plausible and considered in its characterisation.
Relying on the enigmatic and sultry charisma of Romain Duris, The Beat My Heart Skipped is a mesmerising portrait of a man torn by two very different sides of his personality.
