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Heartbeat Detector Details

2008 Certificate 12
  • Rated:
  • 50
  • from 882 members

Heartbeat Detector is an immersive corporate thriller in which Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, Quantum Of Solace) plays Simon Kessler, an in-house corporate psychologist, who is asked to investigate the erratic behaviour of the company CEO (Michael Lonsdale). His investigations take him under the skin of .. Read more

Starring Mathieu Amalric, Michael Lonsdale, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Laetitia Spigarelli
Director Nicolas Klotz
Genres Drama, World Cinema

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Heartbeat Detector

Heartbeat Detector is an immersive corporate thriller in which Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, Quantum Of Solace) plays Simon Kessler, an in-house corporate psychologist, who is asked to investigate the erratic behaviour of the company CEO (Michael Lonsdale). His investigations take him under the skin of his company, and its neutral corporate language, to dark, Cache-style transgressions.

Starring Mathieu Amalric, Michael Lonsdale, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Laetitia Spigarelli, Valérie Dreville, Valérie Dréville, Delphine Chuillot, Lou Castel, Edith Scob, Nicolas Maury, Rémy Carpentier
Director Nicolas Klotz
Studio TRINITY FILMED ENTERTAINMENT LTD.
Run time DVD: 2 hrs 21 mins
Certificate Certificate 12
Genres Drama, World Cinema
Language DVD: French
Subtitles DVD: English
Released DVD: 06 Oct 2008
Production year: 2008
Format DVD

  • Critics' reviews of Heartbeat Detector

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  • 4 stars out of

    Simon (Mathieu Amalric) has been working more-or-less happily for seven years as a psychologist in the Paris subsidiary... read more on Time Out

    • Wally Hammond, 
    • Time Out
    • Posted 04 Nov 2008

  • Most helpful member's review of Heartbeat Detector

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  • 12 out of 14 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 2 stars [Highly rated reviewer]

    Heartbeat detector

    This slow movie's main theme is the correspondence between today's corporate attitude towards employees and the Nazi's towards Jews. Both considered these people as 'things', to be eliminated, or manipulated, as such. Similarly both use euphemisms to gloss over atrocious acts.Despite some excellent acting and character creation the film verges on the unwatchable through the vastly longdrawn out nature of three episodes, which produce boredom and irrititation to a degree that actual walking out of the cinema is almost invited

    (some did when I saw it). None of the professional critics that I read mentioned this evidence of a badly made film and most gave it a rave four stars. I agree completely with our viewers average rating of two and a half stars.

      • herisson from Cowick Lane, Exeter
      • Posted 05 Jul 2008 11:21

  • Most recent members' review of Heartbeat Detector

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  • 7 out of 8 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 1 star [Highly rated reviewer]

    Pretentious

    A deeply flawed exercise is style over content - or rather, style over competent story telling.

    The central premise, that the Nazi's methods of processing human beings and the language they employed in doing so is comparable to contemporary corporations attitudes to their workforce, is potentially insulting both to the descendents of the Nazi's victims and to modern industry. Perhaps this explosive subject was handled more delicately in the book on which the film is based - and it is a film that seems very obviously based on a book.

    Mathieu Amalric, so good elsewhere, is here miscast as Simon; essentially a passive / observer character about whom we learn very little, but through whose eyes we must experience the entire narrative. Such a role requires an actor who can command our sympathy instantly; Amalric with his fixed startled mask of a face fails to do this. The result is we never really care about what happens to Simon; a fatal flaw.

    In addition, so determined is the director to dazzle us with style (and this style does hold the attention for around 30 minutes), that any attempt to create a realistic corporate environment is abandoned in favour of gorgeously uniformly colourless costume, no apparent sign of anyone doing any actual work, not to mention the frankly bizarre sight of suited 30something business men dancing around at grotty underground raves. Initially enjoyable, this lack of realism would not be a problem if the film did not proceed in asking us to engage with entirely real issues such as the holocaust and market economy de-humanisation.

    The more we tire of its glossy facade, the more we experience this film as irritating, tedious, mannered, and very very pretentious. It wants to be Haneke - it's not.

      • Andrews from London
      • Posted 06 Oct 2008 23:16

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Rating breakdown

882 Member ratings
  • 100
21
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20
  • 80
57
  • 70
83
  • 60
176
  • 50
136
  • 40
151
  • 30
70
  • 20
109
  • 10
59

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      • Heartbeat Detector is an immersive corporate thriller in which Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, Quantum Of Solace) plays Simon Kessler, an in-house corporate psychologist, who ...