Will Thomas still lead a life of crime and cruelty, just like his thuggish father, or will he pursue his dream of becoming a pianist?
Twenty-eight-year-old Tom leads a life that might be termed as criminal. In doing so, he follows in the footsteps of his father, who made his money from dirty, and sometimes brutal, real estate deals. Tom is a pretty hard-boiled guy but also strangely considerate as far as his father is concerned. Somehow he appears to have arrived at a critical juncture in his life when a chance encounter prompts him to take up the piano and become a concert pianist, like his mother. He senses that this might be his final opportunity to take back his life. His piano teacher is a Vietnamese piano virtuoso who has recently come to live in France after studying in the Beijing Conservatory. She doesn't speak a lick of French so music becomes the only language they have in common. Before long, Jacques' bid to be a better person means that he begins to yearn for true love. But, when he finally has the chance of winning his best friend's wife, his passion only succeeds in scaring her. And then, one day, his dubious past comes to light.—Sujit R. Varma
A young man is torn between loyalty for his family and the angst-driven need to express his own emotional core in order to redeem himself from a violent lifestyle. Tom (Romain Duris) has innate musical talent and his aggressive piano technique is matched by violent reactionary impulses. It is this violent side that enables Tom to succeed at his survival job as a real estate collection agent. Tom has a natural love for music, constantly listening to interesting music with his headphones and rhythmically tapping his fingers to what he is hearing. By chance he meets a music promoter who he knows from when his mother was a touring pianist, and as it turns out Tom has an advanced training as a classical pianist, and seeks a career change through the management of the promoter. The promoter tells Tom to schedule an audition with him, so Tom starts taking music lessons from Miao-Lin (Linh Dan Pham), a relationship in which she is able to assist Tom in channeling his aggression through his music. Tom's father, Robert (Niels Arestrup), enlists Tom as one of his cronies as well as assisting Sami (Gilles Cohen) and Fabrice (Jonathan Zaccai), as they negotiate shady real estate deals, an activity that depletes Tom's energy and attentions as he strives to release his expressive music talents. Tom's interior conflict grows when he begins an affair with Aline (Aure Atika), Fabrice's wife, who has discovered that Tom covers for her husband when he meets other women for drug-fueled sex. Tom is also pulled into a conflict between his father and a Russian gangster, Minskov (Anton Yakovlev) the consequences of which stay with Tom years after he has forged a new alliance to change his life for the better.
