LA PIANISTE
THE PIANO TEACHER |
 |
Director:
Michael Haneke
Screenplay: Haneke, based on the novel by Elfriede Jelinek.
Cast: Erika Kohut: Isabelle Huppert; Walter Klemmer: Benoît
Magimel; Mother: Annie Girardot.
Awards: Grand Jury Prize, Best Actress, Best Actor, Cannes
(2001); Best Actress, European Film Awards (2001).
Running time: 130 minutes
Year of production: 2001
Rating: Not rated; WARNING! Sex, sexual and psychological
violence.
Gauge: 35mm, DVD (color)
Language: French
Distributor: Kino International
|
|
“Some
might conclude that by juxtaposing high culture and S&M filth,
while offering no palliative psychological explanation, [the film]
is Euro art-shock porn. But that is to overlook its cold and steely
brilliance. . . . And in her severity, her mad anger and tragic fear
of love, Isabelle Huppert gives one of the most compelling performances
to be seen this year.” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian. |
|
|
 |
|
Erika
Kohut, a forty-something piano instructor and Schubert scholar at
the Vienna Conservatory, lives with her obsessively controlling mother
in a claustrophobic flat. A martinet with an icy manner and a cruel
streak toward her students, Erika finds release watching porno films
in sex shops and engaging in genital self-mutilation. One day the
handsome, young, over-confident Walter signs up for her master class
and then professes his love for her. Brisk and businesslike, Erika
makes it clear that even in an affair she will maintain her role of
master. But when she reveals the sadistic practices she demands he
perform on her, his love turns to disgust. In a trice power relations
invert and Erika grovels after Walter until, in his anger, he involuntarily
takes on the sadist’s role prescribed him and drives Erika toward
complete mental breakdown. Shot in a dispassionate, almost clinical
style, the film, though never prurient, is calculated to make us squirm
in the face of such malign and neurotic (and admittedly highly theorized)
behavior. Jelinek has said that her novel shows the price paid by
women for Austria’s proud classical music heritage, but the novel
and film also criticize the crippling pressure exerted on women who
transgress their socially prescribed sexual roles.
|
|
|
| PHOTO Courtesy
of Kino International |
|
|
|
