The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Thomas Seyr is twenty-eight and works in Paris real estate, handling the dirty side of the family business: clearing squatters from buildings and collecting debts for his father, Robert, sometimes with violence. A chance encounter with his old piano teacher revives an ambition he had set aside years earlier, when he was a promising young player. Thomas decides to prepare for an audition and takes lessons from Miao Lin, a Chinese virtuoso who has just arrived in the city and speaks no French. Music becomes the only language the two share. As the audition approaches, the brutality of his working life grows harder to reconcile with the discipline and hope the piano demands.

Jacques Audiard directed and co-wrote the film with Tonino Benacquista; it followed Read My Lips (2001) in his filmography. Romain Duris leads as Thomas, with Niels Arestrup as his father, alongside Jonathan Zaccaï, Gilles Cohen, Linh-Dan Pham as Miao Lin and Aure Atika. Twenty-four cast members are credited. Produced in France by Why Not Productions with Canal+, France 3 Cinéma and La Région Île-de-France, it cost about 6 million dollars and returned roughly 9 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.2/10 from 22,000 votes, on TMDB 6.9/10 from 505 votes, against a critics' rating of 7.4/10 from 100 reviews.