Themes: Self-Destructive Romance, Age Disparity Romance, Teachers and Students
Main Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoît Magimel, Susanne Lothar
Release Year: 2001
Country: FR/AT
Run Time: 130 minutes
Plot
How far is a man willing to go to be with the woman he wants? Erika (Isabelle Huppert) 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 (Annie Girardot), 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 (Benoit Maginel), 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. La Pianiste was shown in competition at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where Isabelle Huppert and Benoit Maginel were named Best Actress and Best Actor, and writer/director Michael Haneke received the Jury's Grand Prize. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Based on the novel by Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek and directed by German torture-meister Michael Haneke, the psycho-drama The Piano Teacher is sure to be a shocking experience for audiences expecting the usual light touches and sensuality of French cinema. This bleak story is spoken in French, but takes place in Vienna, Austria, the home to both Sigmund Freud and Franz Schubert. Incorporating themes from both masters of psychology and composition, respectively, the film effectively links the harsh cruelties of classical music scholarship with an increasingly disturbing mother/daughter relationship. From the first scene, it is apparent that the Mother (Annie Girardot) has caused her daughter a lifetime of suffering and sacrifice in the name of musical perfection, thus breaking her spirit indefinitely. The film works best as a frustrating character study of the daughter, Professor Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert), who exhibits a coldness and insensitivity that is affirmed through her repressed sexual deviancy. The ugly scenes with cocky student Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel) are charged with intense conflict as the aggressively handsome young man tries to pursue his frigid master teacher. The momentum is changed after the climactic moment between mother and daughter, where the narrative seems to only confirm Erika's madness. An interesting intellectual pondering on the nature of sexual repression, The Piano Teacher is a frightening portrait of a broken woman. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Erika (Isabelle Huppert) is a piano professor at a Vienna music conservatory. Although she is in her forties, she still lives in an apartment with her domineering mother (Annie Girardot); her father is a long-standing resident in a lunatic asylum. Erika is only able to "feel" by enacting cruel punishment on her students, whom she secretly detests.
Upon meeting Walter (Benoît Magimel), a charming 17-year-old engineering student, she becomes obsessed with him, though among colleagues she doubts his chances for a professional career; he is starting at too late a stage she feels. He is also a capable performer and shares in her appreciation for Schumann and Schubert.
She destroys the musical prospects of an insecure but talented girl Anna Schober, when driven by her jealousy of the girl's contact with Walter, by hiding shards of glass inside one of her coat pockets, but is wholly sympathetic when the girl's mother (Susanne Lothar) asks for advice on her daughter's recuperation. (The sub-plot of the pupil and her mother, mirroring the main relationship in the film, is absent in Jelinek's novel.)
Behind her icy façade, Erika is a sexually-repressed woman with a long list of sadomasochistic fetishes. Walter is very insistent in starting a relationship with her. However, when she finally acquiesces, Walter is unwilling to indulge her violent fantasies, which repulse him. The film ends with Walter attacking her in disgust in her home as per her request, and having violent sex with her as she lies prostrate after receiving a beating from him. However, the reality does not match her internalised fantasies; her father has also just died. The devastation of this reality drives Erika to stab herself.
…Und was Kommt Danach? •After Liverpool •Sperrmüll •Drei Wege zum See •Lemminge, Teil 1 Arkadien •Lemminge, Teil 2 Verletzungen •Variationen •Wer war Edgar Allan? •Fraulein •
Nachruf für einen Mörder •Die Rebellion •Das Schloß
