When he was younger, Thomas Seyr had a dream of becoming a concert pianist just like his mother but abandoned that goal when she passed away, taking the dream with her. Now, ten years later, Thomas, at twenty-eight, is little more than a professional punk whose job appears to be investing in shady real estate deals then using underhanded and sometimes even violent methods to evict those who cannot pay their rents or mortgages. However, one day Thomas bumps into his late mother's agent who encourages him to take up music again. With a renewed sense of purpose, Thomas begins taking lessons from a beautiful Chinese virtuoso while, at the same time, attempting to pull away from some of the more unsavory elements of his life (including his own derelict father who he keeps having to defend against recalcitrant debtors). But he soon learns that renewal and redemption are often easier to dream about than they are to achieve and that the life we choose early on is often the life we have to live with.<br /><br />In an unusual trans-Atlantic turnabout, "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" is actually a French remake of an American film (it's generally the other way around) - in this case, James Toback's 1978 "Fingers." Set in Paris, this is a subtle, low-keyed study of a man fighting the demons of his own personality while trying to turn around a life that has veered perilously off its original course. Working off Toback's original screenplay, writer Tonino Benacquista and co-writer/director Jacques Audiard avoid making their points with heavy-handed melodrama, choosing instead to show us Thomas as he goes about the routines of his hectic daily life. Wisely, the film rarely makes moral judgments about the character; it merely records his activities, then allows us to size him up based on what we see. The fluid hand-held camera style employed by Audiard and cinematographer Stephanie Fontaine makes it feel as if the events were unfolding extemporaneously - that what we are witnessing is life caught on the cuff as it were. The filmmakers also don't find it necessary to tie up every loose plot end or coddle us by taking the storyline where we in the audience think it should go.<br /><br />"The Beat That My Heart Skipped" would not be the success it is without the riveting performance by Romain Duris in the lead role. He brings such an intensity of focus and so much nervous energy to the part of Thomas that we cannot take our eyes off him for the entire hour-and-a-half-plus that he is on screen. He makes a morally ambiguous character both repugnant and strangely appealing at the same time. This is one of the strongest acting jobs of the past several years, in a film that provides a rich character study along with much fine classical music.