MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Beating Heart’ a True-to-Life Triangle

Francois Dupeyron’s “A Beating Heart” (at the Monica 4-Plex) is the kind of French film you’ve seen countless times, yet it seems fresh because its maker takes emotions seriously.

What gives this love story its impact is Dupeyron’s refusal to present his people as being special. He makes us consider that perhaps it’s not so hard to show the extraordinary in seemingly ordinary people.

Dupeyron sets himself the challenging task of involving us in individuals who are not all that distinctive or unusual. He succeeds because they make love honestly and are capable of reflection--the two things that Lawrence Durrell, in his “Alexandria Quartet,” declared are what’s really important in life.

A 40-ish sharp-featured, auburn-haired woman (Dominique Faysse) finds herself unable to look away from a handsome man (Thierry Fortineau), probably a little younger than she, as he stares at her while they sit across from each other on a train. Moments later they are making passionate love in a hotel room. The woman, Mado, insists that there will be no repeats but allows the man, Yves, to persuade her to take his phone number.

The encounter reveals to Mado just how vulnerable she is. She’s an actress who worries that her career is drying up. Her 17-year-old son (Christophe Pichon) is all but grown up and leading his own life. She has a loving husband, Jean (Jean-Marie Winling), who leads a contented, settled existence as a Paris antiques dealer. He’s a caring man who doesn’t initially seem to sense her desperation at having too much time on her hands. When he subsequently comforts her tenderly she realizes how much she loves him--yet wonders how she will find the strength to end the affair that has caught her up so unexpectedly and so totally.

Clearly, Dupeyron is a director who inspires trust, for surely Faysse and Fortineau had to have been entirely open with him in order to bring alive such impassioned yet self-aware people as Mado and Yves.

As this deliberately low-key film progresses, suspense builds over how how the increasingly conflicted Mado will resolve her plight. Obviously, pain for her and Yves--and also Jean, if he finds out about his wife’s infidelity--is unavoidable, but we come to care deeply about all three and hope that no lives are destroyed in the process.

Dupeyron matches the rigor of his storytelling with an ability to make his story seem happening in the very real, very engaging world of everyday Paris in winter--a world of nondescript hotel rooms, neighborhood bars and crowded sidewalks.

Cinematographer Yves Angelo has the knack of making such familiar backdrops as the Moulin Rouge and Sacre Coeur seem not the least touristy. Heightening the film’s effect is Jean-Pierre Drouet’s unusual drum score, illustrating a key remark: “A beating heart is like a drum.”

One of the film’s most inspired touches is the repeated image of a rushing elevated train, a motif that recurs less and less, suggesting that Mado has broken with routine, that life is no longer passing her by, but that she may have to pay dearly for feeling so alive.

In the diary Dupeyron kept during the planning and making of “A Beating Heart” (Times-rated Mature for some nudity) he entered a quote from anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss that could serve as a coda for his film: “What remains of a thing? The simple fact that it existed, nothing more.”

‘A Beating Heart’ (‘Un Coeur Qui Bat’) Dominique Faysse Mado Thierry Fortineau Yves Jean-Marie Winling Jean Christophe Pichon Stephane

An MK3 Productions USA release of a co-production of Hachette Premiere et Cie/U.C.G./Avril S.A./Fr3 Films production with the participation of the Centre National de la Cinematographie /Soficas Investimage 2/Investimage 3/ Canal +. Writer-director Francois Dupeyron. Producer Rene Cleitman. Executive producer Bernard Bouix. Cinematographer Yves Angelo. Editor Francoise Collin. Costumes Florence Emir. Music Jean-Pierre Drouet. Set designer Carlos Conti. Sound Pierre Gamet. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (for some nudity).