Sunday - Movies

The Age

Thursday April 24, 2008

Craig Mathieson

The Beat My Heart Skipped (2005)

World Movies, 3.25pm

If Hollywood's practice of remaking French releases often has unpleasant results, the reverse of that trend acquired a significant entry. Jacques Audiard's The Beat My Heart Skipped is a loose remake of James Toback's Fingers (1978). Audiard's take is sharper and tighter; it feels thematically contained and unwilling to surrender to diversions. Transplanting New York to Paris, Tom (Romain Duris) is a real-estate broker who forces legal tenants out with sacks of rats and evicts squatters with a baseball bat. Audiard's camera sits on his shoulder, like the conscience Tom has tried to ignore, circling a body so wracked with tension that it's hard to believe his hands can make anything but a fist, let alone play piano. Tom's late mother was a concert pianist but he now lives in the world of his father, whose property portfolio is barely more kosher. Tom is divided between Bach and brutality; a fascinating struggle.

The Day of the Triffids (1962)

ABC1, 12.35am

Howard Keel dodges homicidal plants in the original adaptation of John Wyndham's classic sci-fi novel. -- CRAIG MATHIESON

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