Opening Day: 27 July 2006 (Exclusively at the Picturehouse)

Synopsis:

A superb remake of James Toback's 1978 FINGERS finds a ne-'er-do-well, who works with two scheming real estate men, decides to return to the playing the piano and envisions this to be a life-changing event. While struggling to regain his mastery of the piano, with a Vietnamese teacher, he is called upon by his partners to participate in shady deals and even help one of them cheat on his wife.

Movie Review:

A re-tooling, if you will, of James Toback’s avant-garde Fingers (1978) which starred Harvey Keitel as Jimmy Fingers, a thug who’s also a prodigiously gifted pianist torn between his conflicting worlds. This re-imagined take is given the European treatment. Replacing grit with style and intimidation with frisson, it’s still a dangerous ride through the seedy criminal underbelly of Paris. Seen entirely through the eyes of a singular character, an educated thug by the name of Thomas Seyr (Romain Duris), it’s a chamber piece of an individual’s warring heart and mind.

The first time we see Thomas is during a conversation he has with his irked business associate who explicates his theory of the reversal of roles that fathers and sons inevitably share. Thomas distractedly listens, unaware of an impending change in his life. Quickly cutting to his job, we’re allowed to see the amorality and unscrupulousness that he is surrounded by, which serves him monetarily and later sexually. We’re then introduced to his father (Niels Arestrup), and Thomas learns about his impending nuptials. There’s a discernable undercurrent of hostility in the affection he feels for his father. To understand Thomas, we have to know his past.

He’s a product of 2 dichotomous environments. His father’s a brute, using his insidious influence over his son to suit his needs. And his mother, fits into the other extreme as a gifted concert pianist who molded Thomas’s talents. But alas, her training and protection from the sins of his father ceased when she passed away. Left with his father, Thomas becomes him, all while being disgusted at the outcome of his life. When an unexpected opportunity knocks at his door in the form of his mother’s old musical acquaintance, he feels a new sort of obligation – to himself. Constantly shrouded in ambivalence and hindered by his father’s business dealings, he finds it difficult to pursue his newly reawakened artistic desire. His survival instinct has clouded his ambition and his anger has outstripped his passion.

Thomas proceeds to hire a fresh-off-the-boat Chinese piano coach to find a foothold and the balance that he needs to focus himself for an upcoming audition. Miao Lin (Linh-Dan Pham) doesn’t speak a word of French, just as he doesn’t speak a word of Mandarin. While it provides some of the scarce humour in the film, it could have easily been a superfluous touch in a lesser film. Fortunately and significantly she becomes another insatiable figure of authority in his life, albeit with hints of flirtatious misgivings between them. No doubt due to Duris’s dashing and captivatingly unstable portrayal of his relentlessly proud and heated Thomas. More importantly, she ups the Oedipal factor, playing a bright and reassuring figure to his derisive and dismissive father

While not having the furious intensity of Harvey Keitel, Duris does play an enthralling and unpredictable character. Erudite but not above choosing to use his fists, he’s cool and calculated as opposed to his predecessor’s frenzied and manic meltdowns. It’s a far cry from his most international role as Xavier in L’ Auberge Espagnole and The Russian Dolls.

Duris’s versatility complements the director’s (Jacques Audiard) remarkable agility in constructing subtle yet profound shifts in the narrative’s tone, from rage to desperation to gloom with a continual hint of apprehension. Unmistakably French neo-noir, his direction effortlessly scales the emotional terrain of a troubled man in search of his past and his reciprocal future.

Movie Rating:

(Acute and compelling character study of a walking time bomb with an explosive performance by Romain Duris)

Review by Justin Deimen