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La Pianista (La Pianiste) (The Piano Teacher) [NTSC/REGION 1 & 4 DVD. Import-Latin America] ISABELLE HUPPERT (Spanish subtitles)

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THE PIANO TEACHER goes places most film makers dare not tread - the dark aspects of frustrated sexuality where desire and affection cannot meet. In brief, this is the story of the inner world of an exceptional pianist and piano teacher who lives with her mother in a 'marriage arrangement' that appears to satisfy both with its accompanying fights, jealousies, cheatings, and clingings. This cold pianist (incomparably portrayed by the fine Isabelle Huppert) is absorbed by Schubert and Schumann and shares many of those composers' tendencies towards madness and melancholy. Her private acting out of her sexual life includes forays into pornography video booths, drive-in movies for voyeurism, and other sadomasochistic practices that leave her frustrated in her drive to be humiliated and beaten. Into this sad woman's life enters a sensuously handsome student (again, played with complete credibility and finesse by Benoit Magimel) and much of the film is a hard driving match between lust/desire and need/repulsion, the true approach/avoidance conflict. The pace of the film is so correct for a story about the extended periods of ennui between moments of exhilharation that mirror the life inside a music academy. We are treated to some wonderful Schubert, Schumann, Schonberg, and Bach that serves as the 'dialogue' during extended scenes where the piano teacher listens with her eyes and ears and dsitorted mind, reacting to the music in equal parts with the performing students. Yes, this is a distrubing film, but it is not a grotesque film. Director Michael Haneke manages to place this surreal sexual tragedy for us to understand just how wide the bell curve of human sexuality stretches. An astonishingly fine film - if you are open to explore the dark interstices of the human mind without prejudice. An added feature of an interview on the DVD with Isabelle Huppert about the character she portrays is exceptionally apropos and well filmed.