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What gave you the idea of making a new version of James Toback's FINGERS?
- My producer, Pascal Caucheteux, had just finished producing Jean-François Richet's remake
of John Carpenter's ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. He came to me and said, ‘Do you want to do
a remake? If so, which would it be?‘ Well, the answer was obvious. It would have to be James
Toback's FINGERS. Why? Because the film had had such a big impact on me when it came out,
of course. But also because it was a film that it is difficult to see now. It’s not shown much, so it
has acquired a kind of aura of mystery.
Basically, FINGERS represents the tail end of the comet of seventies American independent
cinema. The hero - Tom, or Johnny, I can't remember the character's name - is played by
Harvey Keitel, just shortly after his performance in Martin Scorsese's MEAN STREETS. Much of the rest of the cast comes out of Coppola’s ‘world‘. It's a very well connected movie!
When I screened it for Tonino Benacquista, I wondered if I hadn't oversold it to him. The plot is full
of gaps, the story's got these great highs, but some real lows too. And there's a certain amount
of cinematic posturing that ages badly.
So why are you so fond of FINGERS?
- Because of the various themes, both the obvious themes and the underlying, things like:
‘Fatherhood‘, ‘Motherhood‘, ‘What it means to be a son‘ and ‘How you can change your life?‘,
‘The price of doing what it is you have to do‘, ‘The business of becoming an adult, how a man
becomes a man... ‘
Why did you set the film - the crime - in the world of real estate?
- The original is set among New York's Italian mafia. That wasn't going to work for us. And when
we sat down to think of something new, Tonino and I came up with real estate pretty fast (we'd
already used it, after a fashion, in READ MY LIPS.)
Specifically, we wanted to plunge into a world of petty real-estate investors, whose behaviour
isn’t mindful of legal niceties, not really moral. Aside from which, there is, to my mind, a parallel of
sorts between the way a conman obtains control over other people's lives and the way a real
estate investor obtains control over the land that people live on, land that is occupied. Both are
appropriating something that's not there to be appropriated.
The rat scene points to the sordidness of the real estate business…
- Yes, they are the rats. And like rats, they end up eating each other alive. That's the point of the
scene.
Did you look to any other films for inspiration?
- I don't really think we needed many other references. FINGERS was quite enough! But Tonino
and I did watch films by James Foley - like GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, which is set in the world
of real estate, in a very masculine world. It's a hard-hitting picture that oozes unease. Set in one
location, free form and yet tightly constrained by formal parameters.
Why did you make THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED such a realistic picture?
- Well, because film is always realistic. And also because, the more implausible an initial premise
seems (can a man be a concert pianist and a good-for-nothing real estate dealer at the same
time?), the more realistically the story has to unfold. Otherwise, the characters aren’t going to be
believable, nor is the plot, nor are the actual scenes… Besides which, realism brings a moral
scale. A movie's realism introduces useful constraints: I know what is right and what is wrong.
I can see how difficult it is for the protagonist to switch from evil to good, that it's no pushover, it
costs him something. I decided to shoot the picture on the fly, to take locations and whatever light
there was as they came. I decided not to worry about lighting continuity. To make do with what-
ever came up.
Why is THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED shot in single-shot scenes?
- In Toback's film, the Harvey Keitel character is permanently stoned, almost pathologically so.
I didn't want to use that, it seemed facile, too explanatory somehow. But I wanted a fast-moving
picture, that didn't seem too rehearsed or staged, not too formal (whatever that means). I wanted
a modest picture (whatever that means). I wanted something fast moving and yet close enough
to the character to provide emotion and feeling. The paradox was that I wanted to feel Tom's
emotions and pace, without relying on over-insistent jump cutting. Single-shot scenes demand
plausible angles that match an actor's natural pacing, that show the way he breathes and
moves. Shooting in long takes frees things up for the actors. If the angles are too formal, the
actors end up pushed into the nooks and crannies of a set. They're blocked. They can't perform.
Why is the outside world off-screen, for the most part?
- In my movies, the characters have to be heroes. The question is, how are they going to be-
come heroes? And what will become of them when they stop being heroes? What challenges
must they overcome? I provide answers to those questions, by - in formal terms - keeping the
outside world at bay, by keeping it off-screen. My hero has to push his way through the world
like some invading force on the march.
From the beginning or very nearly from the beginning, I realized that THE BEAT THAT MY HEART
SKIPPED would have to draw its strength from the actor or actors. They would have to be in tight
shot. The context around them would only exist in terms of sound, and in terms of someone
coming on to say what was going on elsewhere. Which is a theatrical device.
How did you cast Romain Duris as Tom?
- I needed an actor at a crossroads, both in terms of his career and in terms of his personal life.
That was part of the film's subject matter. And then I needed someone fairly young-looking, who
would be credible both as a real-estate investor and as a music addict. I've been watching Ro-
main's progress for ten years now, since Le Péril Jeune, made when he was only twenty. I've
seen him evolve and mature… And then one always casts someone for the simple reason that
one wants to film them… I couldn't just point a camera at anyone. Romain stimulates one's ap-
petite. One wants to move around him, to watch the way he moves.
Why does Tom decide not to avenge his father?
- Because revenge is not the answer. I thought it would be more interesting to see someone
shoving a gun into another person's mouth and deciding not to kill them, than deciding to kill them.
Killing people is easy in movies, but for most people in real life it's tough - I imagine so anyway.
Or rather, I don't imagine that, I need to think it. I need to think killing is not easy. Otherwise, this is
no more than a jungle we're living in. Tom had to be a bigger person at the end of the movie than
he was at the beginning. So killing someone wasn't going to help us. In Toback's original, every-
one's out of their mind. It's a different story.
Niels Arestrup plays Tom’s father.
- He is an ogre and ogres should be soft-spoken, effeminate in some way, despite the virility of
their physique, despite the authority they project… Tom Thumb needs to hear the gentleness of
his mother's voice inside the ogre for the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end... Niels
Arestrup's voice is a feminine voice. Very carefully pitched, almost a whisper… But when the
mics are saturated it turns into the voice of the Devil... And then, with the father-character, I
wanted to investigate a particular point in father/ son relationships, when fathers become their
son's sons - which is also how sons discover that they don't live forever.
Is Mr Fox a stroke of good fortune in Tom's life?
- Meeting Mr Fox makes him understand the nature of his relationship with his father. Tom wants
the audition to succeed. For it to do so, he has to abandon his father and symbolically return to
his mother (the piano represents his mother). Fox provides a timetable and an obligation. If Tom
had not met him, he would probably have carried on looking after his father. But now he has to
become aware of their relationship and the limits to that relationship. Mr Fox can also be seen as
a sublimated version of the father, the ideal father, who is loving, reliable and just. A hidden father. A mother-father.
Why the epilogue, two years later?
- That's the time it takes for Miao-Lin's talent to become public knowledge, thanks to Tom.
The time required to show that their affair is real. Time, also, for Tom to realize that Miao-Lin is the
love of his life, a woman he loves and admires, perhaps.
Why do Chris and Aline vanish?
- The film is the story of a man growing up. He grows up because music teaches him that whe-
eling and dealing is a dead end. As a result of this, he understands women better. He can speak
to them now and is able to tell Aline he loves her. But the main thing driving him on is music. And
it is with Miao-Lin that things become real, which is not surprising because she is a woman and
a musician.
THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED relies heavily on music, how did Alexandre De-
splat design the music for the film?
- The fact that Tom had to listen to and play a great deal of music in the film meant that Alex-
andre's job was pretty clear: he had to compose something which would be part film-music, part
JS Bach. Alexandre mainly worked on Tom's character, to accompany his different moods.
His music never underlines the action, it does not create tension or suspense. It's Tom’s theme.
I don't know if there is such a thing as ‘psychological music‘, but it might apply.
Why did you keep Bach's E Minor Toccata that Harvey Keitel plays in the original?
- In the Toccatas, unlike in the Masses or the Passions, Bach is a keyboard theorist. The Toc-
catas are austere, difficult, virtuoso pieces. It's geometrical music, without much show of feeling,
without any kind of romanticism. If Tom had played Schubert, for instance, he would have had to
perform the music, to inject pathos and expression. Heart. Which would get too close to Tom's
troubles. Is he able to express himself? Does he have a heart? He can only play pieces like the
Toccatas, because the only question is; can I play the right notes at the right speed in the right
order?
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