Based on the 1978 James Toback film Fingers, writer/director Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips), turns in a crafty, modern, Parisian update with The Beat That My Heart Skipped. Twenty-eight-year-old Tom works on real estate deals that border on the criminal while helping his father collect debts. A lover of electro music, with silver headphones semi-permanently attached to his ears, Tom's musical past crosses with his present life when he runs into a concert promoter who worked with his deceased pianist mother. The promoter tells Tom he should audition for him. Caught between following in the footsteps of his real estate-monger father and the musical memory of his mother, Tom decides to give music a chance. To prepare for his audition, he embarks on a regimen of intense training sessions with Miao Lin. She does not speak French and he does not speak Chinese, but the two somehow are able to communicate. From this point on not only does the tempo of Tom's life increase, but it begins to feel out of tune as well. While he is contemplating whether or not to leave the violent life he has known so long for the concert stage, Tom becomes entwined in two potentially dangerous situations: an affair with his best friend's wife and a conflict between his father and a Russian mobster. Though comparisons with the original are inevitable, Audiard and co-scripter Tonino Benaquista's version holds its own along with Audiard's precise direction and Romain Duris' complex performance as Tom.