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The Piano Teacher [2001] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
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.
playing on the tune of pornography
Review date: 2008-07-23 Rating: 10 out of 10
ISABELLE HUPERT WON THE BEST ACTRESS AT CANNES AND MAJIMEL WAS BEST ACTOR -THE DVD HAS A FEATURETTE AND THE AWARD CEREMONY TOO -
Life is a natural gift and art is an imitation of life ,it is at best a humanist communication of that imitation to be perceived as an imitation of nature ,as far as music is concerned it is natural as the two are not to be confused with art itself ,music and schubert are presented in the dual persona of the teacher who is coldly intellectual and a perverse voyeur in private ,the right of privacy is inviolable and as such an artist has the right to perceive out of the private life of his character,in this case a sexually repressed woman who is a musical genius ,she fantasises about sex in a pornographic milieu ,this is a satire on sadomasochism as a direct consequence of being borne out of pornographic celebration of perversion.
The movie is great not because the performances of ISABELLE Huppert as the paradoxically real woman intellectual being pursued obsessively by a charming student infatuated by her talent as Majimel are outstanding ,but rather because of the distinction it makes between the fact that nature ceases to be reality as soon as it is rendered into an art media .
the moment you indulge in an artistic maneouvre you enter a different domain ,a replication of life itself while that can be glorious but it can never be the same .
nature and life never change but art does ,as it is a human perception .
This is the primary reason why piano teacher is great because it observes the auto- biography of an austrian author through the cerebral lens of cinema without taking sides between the 2 main characters who are indulging themselves in a controlled manner to their weird passions ,the evolution of majimel from an infatuated youth to a violent rapist is natural as he is a natural animal under his cloak of civility and the woman provkes and awakes that natural beast.
The consequences are shown without any graphic sex in a very cold manner devoid of sexual gratification ,
The man fully aware of his action informs the woman not to report the event,yet he appears totally non-chalant in the next sequence in a public pretense as if nothing transpired ,the woman thus mutilates herself and leaves the music hall,inferred as perceived ,is she dead or is she gone to a porn shop to gratify herself ,
The conundrum has been left by the artist for the audience to conclude as haneke is too wise to judge or conclude for his audience ,and that is what makes his cinema great art as he observes life without trying to make a stylish circus out of it which must tie all the ends in the way mediocre artists fulfill their perfectionist styles ,as perfection is unattainable in art ,it only exists in nature itself and art is only a perception or imitation of nature .
Great cinema indeed by any definition -art or stylish reality ,it is left for us to decide .
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Reviews
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.
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.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Susanne Lothar
Benoît Magimel
Isabelle Huppert
Udo Samel
Annie Girardot
Creators:
Isabelle Huppert (Primary Contributor)
Annie Girardot (Primary Contributor)
Christian Berger (Cinematographer)
Michael Haneke (Writer)
Christine Gozlan (Producer)
Michael Katz (Producer)
Veit Heiduschka (Producer)
Director(s):
Recording label: Kino
Manufacturer: Kino
EAN: 0738329026424
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Colour, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen,
Release date: 2002-11-05
Universal product code (UPC): 738329026424
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Region code: 1
Running time: 131 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2001
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: French (Original Language)