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The Piano Teacher [2001]
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Director Michael Haneke powerfully evokes the claustrophobic décor of the flat that Kohut shares with her dictatorial yet ineffectual mother, with whom her relationship progresses from the pitiful to the farcical. And farce of the blackest kind is what the film descends to, as Kohut and Klemmer play out a vicious game of sado-masochistic control with an intriguing but indecisive conclusion. Isabelle Huppert is magnificently assured as Kohut, but Benoît Magimel often seems confused as Klemmer, while Annie Girardot resorts to a caricature of the mother. Fans of classical piano will enjoy the masterclass and rehearsal sequences during the first hour, though music is then relegated to a minor role--its deeper relevance to the film being ultimately difficult to define. English subtitles are provided, and the monochrome shades in which the scenes abound come through with suitably wan intensity. Yet it's hard not to feel that a more profound inquiry into the darker side of sexual desire has been lost along the way. --Richard Whitehouse
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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review
An unexpected critical (Grand Prix at Cannes) and commercial (three months in London's West End) success on its release in 2001, The Piano Teacher is a provocative, but ultimately frustrating, film. The intensifying relationship between Erika Kohut, a Viennese piano teacher whose musical focus is gradually undone by sexual repression, and Walter Klemmer, her uninhibited but unsuspecting student and admirer, lacks an underlying motivation, either physical or emotional, to sustain the tortuous encounters of the film's later stages.
The sort of film that gives world cinema a bad name
Review date: 2008-02-14 Rating: 2 out of 10
A slow, boring, pretentious and audience unfriendly film. To signify how important and un-Hollywood it is it has lots of scenes filmed in long static takes that are designed to be boring. The film also features extended classical music interludes. And it has a completely random non-ending.
I don't believe in the psychology of the characters as they're so sketchily drawn. The film keeps the audience and it's own characters at a distance, meaning that as an intense psycho-sexual drama it never gets going. There's more going on under the surface of Basic Instinct than there is in this film.
It's no fun. Avoid unless you want to be bored.
I watched Basic Instinct after this because it infuriated me so much. It might be an illogical piece of stupid trash but at least it did something, and it entertained me while it was doing it. I'll take dumb Hollywood films over movies like this everytime.
If you want an enjoyable, explicit film of substance then I recommend Choses Secrets and Death In A French Garden.
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Reviews
A complete waste of everyone's time
Review date: 2007-12-17 Rating: 2 out of 10
A repressed piano teacher who unaccountably still shares a bedroom with her mother embarks on a relationship with a besotted student but destroys it by demanding kinky sex. It's hard to know what is more surprising about this movie: the fact that the author of the original novel won a Nobel prize or that the luminous Isabelle Huppert would lend her name to such a project. Denounced on release as pornographic, it fails to succeed even on this level, and offers neither insight into human sexuality or characters compelling enough to give the dismal time everyone has any kind of tragic quality. Huppert does her best to inject some life into her role, but her skill as an actress is negated as her character becomes little more than apuppet for authorial/directorial posturing. The attempt at a radical critique of power relations between the sexes collapses into a tired cliche: the attempt of the repressed to live out their deviant desires inevtibaly eads to tragedy. I imagine members of the S&M community would find this film particularly offensive: the notion that a couple of intelligent adults couldn't negotiate their way to a bit of slap and tickle without the situation "spiralling out of control" is patently ludicrous. In an attempt to qualify the movie as "art" everything moves at a snail's pace and is beautifully photographed, but as a cultural artefact of the early 21st century this would have to rank somewhere below the American Pie trilogy.
Huppert all the way
Review date: 2007-07-31 Rating: 10 out of 10
Erika (Isabelle Huppert) is a fortyish piano teacher with deeply repressed sexual feelings. She lives with her mother (Annie Girardot), a controlling, oppressive woman, and deals with her erotic longings through voyeurism, visits to sex shops and self mutiliation. She still sleeps with her mother. The film largely takes place at the conservatory where she teaches and at the apartment she shares with her mother.
Huppert in an excellent on-disc interview says Erika longs to be loved but is frightened of seduction. She treats her students coldly but is drawn to one who is vain and handsome, and played by Benoit Magimel. The rest is the story of her creating and accepting a masochistic relationship with the young man that spirals down into her own psycho-sexual collapse.
This movie won't be everyone's choice for an evening with the kids. It's a serious, disturbing film for adults that looks grimly at repressed feelings and emotional self destruction. For the grownups, it might put you off sado-masochism for a few days. It's a first-rate film.
Isabelle Huppert is one of my favorite actors. Like Depardieu, she has no apparent screen vanity; she'll do what it takes for the role. She also has the rare ability to express deep, unsettling feelings with an absolute economy of expression. She is incredible in this film.
I'm happy to have the disc, but to tell you the truth I'm not sure how many more times I'll watch it.
The DVD transfer is excellent, the audio is first rate, and the English subtitles are easy to follow.
Disturbingly brilliant
Review date: 2007-04-18 Rating: 8 out of 10
It's been said by a reviewer that this film excels in the area of pornographic material alone - sex plays a huge part in this film, but there aren't any graphic sex scenes in it apart from the ones our lead lady watches in a booth at a sex shop.
Isabelle Huppert plays the sexually (and socially) repressed piano teacher, Erika Kohut. Her bizarre relationship with her domineering mother seems to be at the heart of her cold exterior. Erika seems to display little emotion outside of her apartment.
It is as we see Erika correcting the mother of one of her students when she says "we have sacrificed everything" in order for the student to practice piano by telling her that it is the daughter who has sacrificed everything - not the mother, that we glimpse some of the inner pain Erika is hiding away as she identifies with the girl.
Erika ends up engaging in what appears to be an act of spite, cold hatred against the girl. But on reflection, this may have been Erika's way of setting the girl free from the kind of life she herself had.
As part of the sexual repression, Erika exhibits strange sexual behaviour. This is expressed through such acts as mutilating her own genitals with a razor blade whilst she watches in a mirror, and urinating whilst watching couples having sex in cars. She also has a strong sexual desire which we learn about later in the film after she succumbs to the infatuation from Walter Klemmer - a student of hers.
This film is ultimately about control, to her students Erika seems to be very controlling. Erika herself is controlled by her mother and she fantasises about being controlled by someone else.
Some scenes are difficult to watch; Erika mutilating herself, the mutilation of her student's hand, the final scene with Walter Klemmer.
Throughout this film we see a woman slowly break down. Isabelle Huppert does this so convincingly that you can't take your eyes from the screen. We see a woman lose her poise and dignity. She eventually gains ultimate control in the last few moments of the film.
Steel yourself for this one.
Review date: 2006-05-06 Rating: 8 out of 10
The Piano teacher examines the gradual disintegration of personality under the pressures of extreme sexual repression and what can happen when the lid is finally taken off. The pressure-cooker nature of Isabelle Huppert's character is brilliantly and disturbingly conveyed. The bizarre nature of her relationship with her mother is made believable by the performances of both actresses. I find all the other performers close to Huppert's equal and certainly see no evidence of the over-acting mentioned by another reviewer.
Ultimately, the extreme subject matter is dependent on acting that is completely committed and courageous. Michael Haneke has obtained exactly this from all his performers, but Huppert is particularly convincing. I found some scenes almost unwatchable, but Huppert is so compelling that you cannot turn away. Like Magimel's character we move through admiration to love for this tortured soul, only to be driven away by horror and disgust as she unravels before our eyes. As an earlier reviewer said, this is not for the faint-hearted but is one of the most remarkable of recent European films that I have seen.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Anna Sigalevitch
Udo Samel
Susanne Lothar
Annie Girardot
Benoît Magimel
Director(s):
Recording label: Artificial Eye
Manufacturer: Artificial Eye
EAN: 5021866214306
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL, Widescreen,
Release date: 2002-05-27
Number of discs: 1
Audience rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 129 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2001-09-05
Language: English (Unknown)
Language: French (Unknown)
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: French (Original Language)