Product Details

• Actors: Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoît Magimel, Susanne Lothar
• Directors: Michael Haneke
• Format: Import, Color, Widescreen, Subtitled
• Subtitles: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Run Time: 125.0 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000BGPKJ4
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #421,882 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

How far is a man willing to go to be with the woman he wants? Erika is a veteran piano instructor at a famous music conservatory in Vienna. Erika is highly respected for her remarkable talent and strong discipline, but she's also known to be a harsh taskmistress and does not suffer fools gladly; among her students, Erika's class is considered a highly rewarding challenge, but difficult to weather. Erika seems to get her stern and unforgiving nature from her mother, with whom she still lives, and without a husband or a lover, Erika satisfies her strong but frequently perverse sexual appetites through extreme porn videos, voyeurism, and masturbatory practices that sometimes involve pain and self-mutilation. Erika discovers she has attracted the attentions of one of her students, Walter, a gifted and good-looking young man who does not seem at all put off by her icy personality. She refuses to acknowledge Walter's romantic overtures, but when he rises to the defense of a fellow student after a recital, Erika is enraged, and Walter pursues her, finally following her as she storms off to the women's room. Erika abruptly approaches Walter in a rough sexual fashion, but refuses to fully satisfy him until he is willing to allow her to control the relationship. When Walter becomes aware of just how much pain and humiliation is involved in Erika's erotic bill of fare, he refuses to participate, but in time his attraction to her causes him to weaken, and he begins to accede to her sexual demands.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Struggle between Love and Seduction, July 28, 2011

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: La Pianiste / The Piano Teacher (Original French Version with English Subtitles) (DVD)

LA PIANISTE (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 exhilaration 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 distorted mind, reacting to the music in equal parts with the performing students. Yes, this is a disturbing 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. Grady Harp, July 11

5.0 out of 5 stars 5 stars for leading actors, October 7, 2005

By 

Miho Hirono "ex-musician" (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: La Pianiste / The Piano Teacher (Original French Version with English Subtitles) (DVD)

The thema of the movie is that how far the man who is in love with a woman can be involved in her world, and also is that how far actors can be involved in their role.

I admire two leading actors, Isabell Huppert and Benoit Magimel, for thier courage to act these characters. They each got the best actoress and actor in Cannes 2002, they deserve it and should be given.

Erika, a main character and Huppert acted, had been a lack of sexial relationship with men then in a way she lost control of her desire outside school and home. However the movie reprensents it so directly then I can not get involved with. That is something I need to understand but I don't want to see.

Benoir Magimel, I became a fan of his by the movie, he is beautiful and attractive in the movie and that charm is even strange in his character. It is so strange a young attractive man fell in love with a woman like Erika and it takes so long time to realize and leave her.

The story tells us that it is fantasy love makes people strong and beautiful. Many of French movies represent this idea any way.

I don't recommend you to watch this movie, however if you want to challenge how far you can be involved as an audience with realistic, do it, maybe that worth it.