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The Piano Teacher (Unrated Edition) [VHS]

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When I first heard about Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher", about a sexually repressed instructor at the Vienna Conservatory, I thought it was exactly the kind of movie I didn't want to see. In a world awash in pop music, South Park and Britney videos, how could a film about the stultifyingly uptight classical music world have *any* relevance for a post-modern, post-everything film buff (even if he is American?) Didn't Bergman tread this ground 40 years ago? Didn't Bunuel make savage fun of the hypocrisy of bourgeois sexual respectability in "Belle de Jour" (1966)? Wasn't Haneke a little behind the times?

Walking - or I should say staggering - out of the theater 2.5 hours later, I was humbled by the scope of Haneke's and Huppert's achievement. Rarely have I seen a film both so clear-eyed about sexual psychosis and yet so compassionate as well. Isabelle Huppert, who probably wasn't nominated for an Oscar only because the film can be so off-putting to some, gives what can only be described as an intense performance. Her clenched face and the darting movements of her eyes reveal more about her character - her inner rage, her self-hatred - than most actors can achieve with sheets and sheets of dialouge. That's the essence of the film, everything is very formally *controlled* - so that when violence, self-inflicted or otherwise, breaks out, it is startling because it emerges from such as civilized veneer.

If the point of the film were to demonstrate the High Culture spiritually deforms those who engage in it (and I don't think it does), the film would have minimal interest. High culture has been on the defensive so long, it doesn't need to be blamed for driving Isabelle Huppert nuts as well. Rather the film gains its strength from watching a seriously damaged human being - damaged in ways only suggested at - construct a protective cocoon around herself that fails to protect her from troublesome feelings and desires. The film is somewhat similar to Neil Jordan's great film, "The Butcher Boy" whose protagonist uses an opposite strategy - relentless good cheer -to mask the absolute misery he's sinking into. In these two films, as well as other recent films like Noe's "I Stand Alone", Nyutten's "L'Humanite", Haneke's other recent film "Code: Unknown" and Tim Roth's "The War Room", European filmmakers are portraying contemporary Europe as a society rife with cultural and psychological malaise - along with a great uncertainty as to ability of others to ameliorate the misery that man hands to his fellow man.

"The Piano Teacher" is important - essential even - not because Isabelle Huppert is asked to do things on camera few major actresses would willingly agree to. The film gets right to the dark heart of our contemporary malaise - our declining faith in the ability of culture - or anything - to ease us out of our despair and mitigate the cruelty we often see around us. The film is extremely distributing, enraging but not empty - it was the most provocative piece of cinema to be release in the US last year.

The Piano Teacher shows us a few days in the life of a disturbed woman who is both victim and victimizer. Isabelle Huppert briliantly plays the part of Erika Kohut, a middle-aged piano teacher at a music college in Vienna. Annie Giradot is no less effective as her domineering and watchful mother. The two women abuse one another physically and verbally. This relationship is long standing and comes to a crisis as the film progresses.

Erika is unable to break the bonds that attach her to her mother. Instead, like a child who has never grown up, she wants to please her mother, but is driven to act out her own fantasies secretly. Her mother appears to be unaware of the deep seated repression that is consuming her daughter. What she does see is an angry, hateful person who lies to her and deceives her frequently.

Erika's sexual frustration takes the form of physical and pschological self-hate. She visits porn shops to degrade herself and she mutilates her body to distract her from the intense psychological pain she suffers constantly.

At school her anger takes the form of verbal abuse to her students who are unable to achieve the artistic integrity she demands. What appears to be an inflated sense of her own importance as an artist masks her frustration at being second-rate. She is not good enough to be recognized as an artist in her own right. Her hatred of herself and her inadequacy as an artist prompt her to strike out at students and colleagues alike.

Into her seething cauldron of despair comes a young engineering student, Walter Klemmer, wonderfully played by Benoit Maginel, who wants to study Schubert with her. At first she refuses him, but pressure by the school to accept him forces her to work with him. The sexual tension between teacher and pupil is immediately apparent and moves forward to a collision some reviewers have likened to a bad car accident.

In the end we see Erika and her student reduced to the lowest common demoninator as human beings. At first Erika is successful at dominating her young student, but the tables are turned as she becomes dependent on him. Both teacher and student are playing a zero sum game to lose. The final climax and its denoument leave Erika a wounded, broken woman.

The director, Michael Haneke, elicits finely tuned performances by all the players, particularly Huppert, who is magnificent in the title role. Haneke has made this film for adults only. It is dark and disturbing from beginning to end with moments of pain and violence that are as real as anything one is likely to see on the screen.

Huppert as the piano teacher has no redeeming qualities we are able to see in the short space of time covered by the film. Viewers looking for a pleasant and agreeable entertainment are urged to search elsewhere. Haneke shows us a dark side of life and he is unflinching in its portrayal.

In French, with English subtitles, this film is a risky psychological drama about a well-respected music professor at a prestigious Vienna music school. She's in her forties, wears no makeup, keeps her hair in a bun and dresses in the plainest of clothes. As a teacher, she is severe and demanding. She and her mother live together and their constant arguments include slaps and tears and reconciliation. Her secret life, however, includes pornography, voyeurism and genital self-mutilation. When an attractive young man starts to pursue her romantically, she shocks him with her perversions. How this all plays out is fascinating and the eventual conclusion is inevitable, but along the way the audience is plunged into this very unsettling world.

Isabelle Huppert's performance as the teacher is absolutely magnificent. There are a lot of close-ups of her unsmiling freckled face and dark opaque emotionless eyes. There is a vague reference to her father being in an insane asylum; other than that there is no back-story to help us understand her. Benoit Magimel, cast as her young suitor, has a difficult role as well. During the course of the film, we watch him change before our eyes. All the other characters are also well cast and give outstanding performances.

The director, Michael Haneke, kept the tension and erotic undercurrent strong throughout. There is a lot of classical music and scenes of recitals and piano lessons in a very rigid and upscale world. And then there are those scenes targeted to make the audience squirm in their seats. When all the elements are put together, the results are a film that will long haunt my memories.

The Piano Teacher is not for everyone. But for those adventurous few who are willing to experience the different and dramatic, don't miss it.

I saw this film in Paris last October. Director, Michael Haneke has delivered an incredibly powerful film based on a controversial Austrian novel. Isabelle Huppert plays Erika, a brilliant piano professor at a college in Vienna. At work she is respected among her peers and indimidating to her students. At home, she lives with her tyrant mother (Annie Girardot). Erika and her mother have an emotionally abusive co-dependent relationship to the point where they share the same bedroom. Erika's sex life consists of eerie visits to porno shops and sadistic self-mutilation. When one of her students (Benoit Magimel) attempts to seduce her, she agrees but on HER terms.

A family film this is not. There are some very disturbing scenes of emotional and physical abuse. But as difficult as the subject matter is, it does help the viewer to understand the psyche of a woman who has been denied happiness all her life. Isabelle Huppert is fantastic in a very difficult role. Her performance of the tortured Erika is the only time, I've seen a character so disturbed and cruel who I found pity in and wanted to see succeed. Forget the Oscar nominations, this is the best female performance of the year! Annie Girardot and Benoit Magimel are wonderful and very convincing in their roles as well. Lastly, the director, Michael Haneke. I've never seen any of his previous work but few directors have the ability to take complete control of my attention and keep it long after their film is over. Haneke is one of the very few who did. "La Pianiste" is a masterpiece, I recommend it to anyone who has an appreciation for European cinema.

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.

Like all of Haneke's films, the less you know going in the better, so I'm not going to discuss the plot. You probably already know that it's about a sexually, uh...different...piano teacher portrayed by Isabelle Huppert with astonishing and heart-breaking power, and really, that's all you need at this point. Don't read the plot synopsis above, as it gives away absolutely everything--really, I think Amazon needs to take it down immediately.

Although this film might not be for everyone (particularly the squeamish or the faint of heart), it's an astonishingly powerful work of art. A lot of "art" movies are boring, perhaps because they are inaccessible; I can't think of anyone who could sit through this one bored. You can think about this movie on the surface or you can keep plumbing its thematic depths, to very worthwhile results. Aside from the obvious themes in the film, such as madness and sexual repression, the break between high art and popular culture, and sexual/romantic politics, I consider this an important feminist and even neomarxist film (insofar as the film is a criticism of capitalist society)--don't believe me? Google Adorno's essay "The Culture Industry" and see how closely his ideas are paralleled in the film. But this isn't just me being pretentious, Haneke has Erika drop Adorno's name in casual conversation in the second scene of the film; and of course, Elfriede Jelinek, Noble Prize in Literature winner in 2004 (a scandalous win that shook up the stuffy old academy) is a feminist writer, so we know to look for these themes. Other themes include: voyeurism (especially yours, the viewer...Haneke is definitely trying to punish you for your prurient search for titillation disguised as high art--we're all guilty of it!), parent-child relationships and stage parents, and on an intriguing level, the nature of love, and how it's perverted by capitalist society.


Sound like too much for one film? It's not! This one will profoundly shock you, leave you thinking about it for days. I've been thinking about it for months now, and only slowly did many of the ideas in the film become clear.

That's the great thing about Haneke; he can weave a lot of different concepts into a film which still works as a film--I can't say you'll have fun, but you will definitely NOT be bored.

Usually I am not the type who likes dark, indeterminate, artsy movies -- I prefer to be entertained by a good story, quality comedy or satire. Had I read these reviews, I probably would have not chosen to view this film. However, not knowing what to expect, I found this one very engaging, gripping and more than a bit haunting. Increasingly repulsive, yet fascinating on a number of levels. There is less plot than in the visually-stunning "The Talented Mr. Ripley" or beautiful muscial "Sweeney Todd," (both highly recommended), but this similarly takes you deeper into the twisted psyche of a monstrous human being -- in this case, a repressed middle-aged, French classical piano teacher. Powerful images stayed with me long after viewing. It's a well-crafted, superbly-acted film on a very difficult, abstract subject. Highly recommended if you like looking into the darker layers of humanity, society and sexuality, without Hollywood's mandatory PC crap or in-your-face politicizing. The French may be pains-in-the butt in terms of international relations, but boy can they paint a twisted celluloid portrait. Excellent, but not a first-date movie!

"The Piano Teacher" is the story of Erika Kohut (a once in a lifetime role, perfectly played by French actress, Isabelle Huppert) is a renowned piano professor at the Vienna Conservatory, a top-notch prestigious music school in Vienna. Erika, in her early forties and still painfully single, lives and even sleeps in the same bed with her vicious, overprotective and sadistic controlling mother (played aptly by Annie Girardot, however the part was initially offered to the fabulous Jeanne Moreau). Erika is a complex human being to say the least. Besides the fact that she is playing host to a many colored different lifestyle by acting as the "man of the house", Erika is utterly and deeply sexually repressed. When things in Erika's tiny, cloistered life get too horribly awful for her own self-expression and outpouring of feelings, she resorts to sexual self-mutilation, voyeurism, porn shops, and her own underworld of unspeakable acts on other human beings besides herself. Then... Erika meets Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel), a engineering student-cum-talented pianist who signs on to Erika's "Master Class" that she teaches at conservatory. Walter is struck by the singularly quiet but strong, Erika and he lets his feelings be known. However, Erika "expresses" herself in very "different" ways such as sexual sado-masochism and writes to Walter all the things that she longs for him to "do" to her, all the while, Erika treats Walter like less than a human as she does, most all the people and her own students in her sick, sad and twisted life. The irony of this story is that Erika can only truly express herself and her scant good, beautiful and natural feelings "a priori"- in and through her music, but in really no other way. Her sick and twisted thoughts of man overpowering woman, rape, a sexual relationship with her own mother, self-mutilation, and general sadistic behavior overtake her and in the end... Well, watch and find out for yourself. Really, over and above it all, Erika's jealousy of other human beings who can and DO express their longings, fears, joys, and disappointments get to her in the end. When Erika is finally able to express her feelings and what it is she THINKS that she wants and desires in her sad half-human, base sort of way, she is rejected and thus the end to the tale is quite a sad one... This is probably the most sexually charged movie that I have viewed without any of the cast being the least bit naked. There is no quivering frontal flesh in this fabulous film, only frightful, frigid, fruitless feelings that will cut you to the bone... Careful Viewing Is Required...

Well, I finally got the chance to see the movie which won Isabelle Huppert Best Actress at Cannes, the movie which David Lame and his not so merry band of God Botherers tried to stop from being screened in NZ (without them having seen it). Lo, they have turned this movie into a decent sized hit as a result. THE PIANO TEACHER is actually the best SPCS publicized movie I've seen to date. Brilliantly directed by Michael Heneke, who scripted from Elfiede Jelinek's novel.Huppert plays Professor Erika Kohut; a cold, brutal, seemingly prudent piano teacher at a prestious music academy. But behind her icy facade lies an obsession with pornography and sadomasochistic sex. When a gifted young piano student (Benoit Magimel) comes under Erika's tutelage, he doesn't play to her impossibly high standards and as a result bears the brunt of her wrath but he soon finds himself falling in love with the professor who just seems to enjoy playing mind games with him. Though unknown to him Erika is gradually losing control under the influence of her domineering mother.
THE PIANO TEACHER is exceptionally well photographed with a complex structure and a brilliant perfomance from Huppert (In fact you easily forget she IS just an actress playing a part).There are some rather grim scenes including plenty of S&M, a funny drive-in theatre peeing scene and Erika putting broken glass in a girls coat pocket. I'm not sure if this will get a DVD release in NZ, but it deserves to. THE PIANO TEACHER is a masterwork that commands a wide audience, and it was probably only because of its content that it was overlooked by the Academy. One of the best movies I've seen recently.

This is not an artsy film. It's not The Red Violin, Amadeus or The Turning Point. It is more an intelligent Fatal Attraction without the sensational violence. The movie explores behavior hidden behind doors: self-mutilation, masochism, honest sexual desire; all against a backdrop of classical piano instruction in Vienna. While the film is graphic at points, this helped me to understand the aforementioned behaviors. I need to have a better understanding of children who cut themselves, girls that starve themselves, and teens who commit suicide. This film is a cinematic, daring start.