User reviews

Why is it that Freud was always talking about hating your father? Mommies do the best job of screwing you up, and Erica's (Isabelle Huppert) mom is a doozy.

Huppert can always be counted upon to give an incredible performance, and she is superb here in the painful-to-watch film. She is carrying an incredible amount of psychological baggage, and it really affects her emotionless life. She is looking for love, but only finds seduction. Part of the problem is hers as she has no concept of what love is. She has a warped sense of S&M that she supposes is love, but when faced with reality, she is shocked and cold.

I should warn you that the ending is certainly unconventional, but the film is unconventional as well, so it fits.

Isabelle Huppert must be one of the greatest actresses of her or any other generation. "La Pianiste" truly confirms it. As if that wasn't enough, Annie Girardot plays her mother and Annie Girardot is one of the greatest actresses of her or any other generation. So, as you may well imagine, those pieces of casting are worth the horror we're put through. Isabelle and Annie play characters we've never seen before on the screen. A mother and daughter yes but with such virulent fearlessness that sometimes I was unable even to blink or to breath. Personally, I don't believe in the director's intentions, I don't believe they (the intentions that is) go beyond the shocking anecdote and the ending made me scream with frustration but I was riveted by the story written in the face of the sensational Huppert and the fierceness of Girardot's strength. I highly recommend it to cinema lovers anywhere and to the collectors of great performances like me, you can't afford to miss "La Pianiste"

The Piano Teacher (2001)

This is a difficult movie. It's difficult to watch at times, if you take it seriously. But I think it was difficult to film, to write, to act.

The premise is subtle even if it sounds sensational--show the inner mind and inner life of a brilliant woman who is mentally ill. She has compulsive issues, I think, and sexual repression that has led her to masochistic and finally sadistic extremes. She is admirable in some external way for her self-control which reads, to an outsider, as cold precision, the kind needed to be an extraordinary classical pianist.

But the movie takes us inside her life, first to the unhealthy relationship with her mother, then the oddly stern and indifferent role she takes with her advanced students. Finally there is a young man who sees only her ability, and her external beauty. (This woman, Erika, is played by the incomparable Isabelle Huppert.) He is a pianist of unusual talent, but he wants not to concertize, but to live life. He plays hockey. He has friends. He smiles warmly. He is, in short, a healthy normal and rather handsome young man.

And he falls for Erika. This is where the movie gets weirder and weirder, but also more challenging. They play an intense game of sexual chicken, at first, and lots of head games. He knows she's superior to him in some way--older, more severe---but he has no idea about her slanted view of life and of sex. He wants her. He becomes a pupil of hers just for that reason. She pretends not to care, or to rebuff him (in part this isn't pretense because she's afraid). Finally a couple of serious and demented confrontations occur.

And things unravel in a very interesting way. Some people will find it simply sick and unwatchable. It also happens very slowly--if the film has an obvious flaw, it's the pace. It's in love with itself far too much. But if you get into that flow, and can take the pain that will rise up, then you will at least be greatly affected. That's more than most movies can say.

It's all quite in ernest. I don't think it's a bit campy or playing games with the viewer. It's really trying to get at this woman's psyche--and the young man's, since he gets in deeper than he intended. It's filmed with terrific planning and visual panache. And it makes some kind of deranged sense, too. In fact, there are probably more people in these kinds of situations than I'll even know, and to them I say give this a careful look.

To be honest I had to go have a stiff drink after this film; I felt drained and my shoulders were knotted. I also had to talk the whole thing out with the friend I saw it with for a good half hour. Whatever else this movie is, it's not dull - you have to have respect for anything that produces such a visceral reaction, even if you couldn't claim to have 'enjoyed' the experience. (Anyone else I've talked to who's seen it has responded in much the same way.)

The reason the film is so powerful is not simply because it deals with unpalatable subject-matter like sado-masochism and violently dysfunctional relationships - that on its own would leave no defence against a charge of exploitation. It packs a punch because whatever her deeply ingrained character flaws, however reprehensible her behaviour (and at one point that's VERY), the piano teacher Erika always retains your sympathy - you never forget the type of influences which might have made her what she is, while scenes as subtle as the one where she walks down a street of shoppers, being casually bumped into without apology, remind you of her utter isolation. Isabelle Huppert's performance is as brilliant as it is uncomfortable and I can't even imagine how she might have wound down after a day's filming.

Appalling, compelling, horribly funny at times, but ultimately deeply despairing look at how people damage each other. View with caution.

If you think piano teacher Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) in Michael Haneke's film "LA PIANISTE" is the ultimate degree in the personification of derangement, perversion and darkness, I've got news for you: the piano teacher in Elfriede Jellinek's novel "LA PIANISTE" (on which the film was based) is twice as "repulsive", "disgusting", "deranged" and even more fascinating -- though there can't be words enough to translate the level of artistic proficiency that Isabelle Huppert has reached here, above all other mortal actresses in activity today. And who else could have played this character with such emotional power, complete with the best piano playing/dubbing an actor could deliver?

In the novel as in the film, there are two big antagonists to the "heroine" Kohut: her own mother (wonderful, wreck-voiced Annie Girardot, in a part originally intended for Jeanne Moreau) and Austria itself. The mother personifies Jellinek's perception of her native Austria as a country that deceptively and perversely encourages racist/fascist (or at least authoritarian) behavior, sexual and emotional repression, and, let's say, übermensch ideals which are impossible to keep today without the danger of a mental breakdown.

"La Pianiste" also deals with a very powerful and delicate issue: how dangerous it is to reveal your innermost fantasies to the one (you think) you love. We tend to think our own sexual fantasies must be as exciting to others as they are to ourselves, which may turn out to be a huge, embarrassing and sometimes tragic mistake. Here, Kohut learns (?) the lesson in the most painful and humiliating of ways.

It must be mentioned that Elfriede Jellinek is one of the best-known and praised authors in Austria and Europe (well, now she's got a Nobel Prize!) and that autobiographical passages can be inferred in her novel, as she herself was a pianist and had a reportedly difficult relationship with her mother. The novel also includes long passages about Kohut's childhood and adolescence so you kind of understand how she turned into who she is now. Haneke chose to hide this information in the film, forcing us to wonder how she got to be that way (don't we all know a Erika Kohut out there?). But he very much preserves the fabric of the book in his film: unbearable honesty, to the point where most secretive, "horrendous" feelings painfully emerge -- envy, cruelty, violence, jealousy, hate, misery, sadism, masochism, selfishness, perversion etc. All of them unmistakably human.

I thought "La Pianiste" was a deeply moving film, very disturbing and thought-provoking, with a handful of unforgettable scenes, and that's just all I ask of movies. It also made me buy and be thrilled by the book, discover a fantastic author I hadn't read before, and listen again and again to Schubert - so, my thanks to Haneke, Jellinek and Isabelle!!! On the other hand, if you're looking for light entertainment, please stay away. My vote: 9 out of 10

Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) has a volatile home life with her combative mother leading to violence at times. Erika has disturbing sexual tendencies such as porn shop visits, self-mutilations, and voyeurism. She's a piano professor at a conservatory. She's hard on her students especially the fragile Anna Schober. Walter Klemmer is a new student at the conservatory despite her objection. He's taken with her and she eventually lets him into her sexually disturbed world.

Isabelle Huppert has such great screen presence. She's great at playing damaged, vulnerable, and cold. It's not the most fun watch. There are a couple of really weird scenes. Her relationship with her mother is outrageous. This is an interesting character study of a troubled woman.

The novel of Elfriede Jelinek where La Pianiste is based upon is an interesting feminist study of suffocation of women by men set against an autobiographic background. Die Klavierspielerin is also a personal settlement of her life with her mother. Jelinek herself studied at a Conservatory in Vienna. Later works of her are more an indictment of the suffocation of life in Austria, a common element in Austrian post-war culture as the country has never come to grips with its troubling past.

In the movie less emphasis is paid to the relationship with the mother and so the source of Erika's behavior remains largely unexplained here. Erika's father dies and mother and daughter show no emotion at all. In the beginning there is a short fight between mother and daughter about control the mother has on her life. The TV is always on, thereby explaining that mother and daughter don't live life to the fullest at all. Later on she sleeps in one bed with her mother; her mother suddenly starts to warn her for failure if not performing at her best, a theme often to be found in Jewish culture. Huppert is apt for this role and some years earlier did another movie where Jelinek did part of the writing (Malina).

The glass-breaking scene has a double meaning. Not only does Erica want to punish Walter for his attention to and interest in another student, she also sees a reflection in that girl's mother of her own mother; in a way she wants to help her preventing having the same life as her with no personal choices of her own.

By entering into the relationship with Walter, a classic male/female struggle starts. Although women in Western societies are nowadays more equal than ever before, Jelinek wants to say that women and men are still strictly attached to certain role models that are almost all power-driven (among which sexual role models). Her sexual desires, although extreme and communicated in the most awkward of possible ways, can not be realized in a relationship. The relationship turns into a sexual battleground, in order to be loved and not lose Walter she has to give in to him, so he eventually vindicates and her total disintegration as a woman starts. The self-inflicted wound in the end only confirming her loss and being a 'punishment' for her choices.

The movie's distant and cold-hearted style reflects the book, so there is congruency there. But the movie lacks interesting camera-work as all shots are long and static shots that only move sometimes to follow the characters. I find this combination often deadly for a movie. Compare this to Tarkovsky (long but moving shots) or Koreeda (short but static), both of which can work. Cinematography is almost absent here. Haneke can create shock value from his actors and by editing: The transition of the first traditional part to the sex store is rather abrupt, although not on the level of editorial transitions Kubrick makes in Eyes Wide Shut for example. There are some good moments: There is no music when the end credits run, the use of Schubert (although used better in Barry Lyndon) as indication of 'decay', Erika never performing for a large audience herself, the mother has no name.

On her personal website, Elfriede Jelinek has commented about the movie making process. Not only does she see the meticulous planning process associated with making a movie as restricting and compares that to the choices one has to plan his or her own life. On that website she has also written a very interesting review of Lynch's Lost Highway, one of the more important movies ever made. If ever a director like that could have taken on this intriguing book.

As with all Haneke films, make your own decision--don't be swayed by what you read and if you are interested in someone using the medium of film for their own unique ends, see it yourself. Isabelle Huppert is stunning in this film--combined with Haneke, these two never pull their punches. Haneke reels us in with the lure of golden boy, Benoit Magimel, but this is an anti-romance as much as Funny Games was an anti-thriller. You'll have to force yourself to watch much of it and the catharsis is much more in the range of sustained anxiety than any kind of emotional release but it's incredibly nervy and thought provoking; Haneke continues to hold up a mirror to how desensitised Western civilization is or has become. People may turn their noses up at this but it's only taking what Solondz did in Happiness a few steps further. While grounded in reality, much of what Erika (Huppert) does can be viewed as emotional metaphor. I'm not recommending it but I wouldn't dissuade you either...it definitely divides people but given it's largely about repression--that's no surprise.

I saw this film at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival. La Pianiste reinforces the "Austrians=grim" thesis I'm formulating. Isabelle Huppert won a well-deserved Best Actress award at Cannes for her portrayal of a woman who, in her efforts to attain the artistic ideal, loses her humanity. Trapped by her talent, she suppresses her emotions and her sexuality until they can only be expressed in twisted and terrifying ways. When a younger student falls in love with her, our hopes rise, but are soon dashed by the realization that she cannot experience love the way others can. It is too late for her, and the film's final 30 harrowing minutes are, tellingly, devoid of the beautiful music that carried the first 90 minutes. The message seems to be that the music itself is not enough without the life and beauty it's describing.

"The Piano Teacher" is a Drama movie in which we watch a young man falling in love with his masochistic piano teacher. Their relationship has its ups and downs and the fact that she lives with her mother who is very strict creates more problems.

I did not know what to expect from this movie but I was surprised by the interpretation of Isabelle Huppert who played as Erika Kohut the piano teacher. She was simply outstanding and I believe that her interpretation made the difference. The plot was simple but interesting with no much of suspense but full of mystery and plot twists that I could not expect or predict. Regarding the direction which was made by Michael Haneke, it was good and he created a mysterious atmosphere, something that made his movie even more interesting. Finally, I have to say that "The Piano Teacher" is a nice movie but I can understand those who did not like it because it is not meant to be for everyone.

Although  "The Piano Teacher" is a French film with dialogue in French, it is set in Austria, based on a novel by an Austrian writer (Elfriede Jelinek) and directed by an Austrian-born director, Michael Haneke. The original French title of this film was "La Pianiste" which literally means "The Pianist", as does Jelinek's title "Die Klavierspielerin". This title was not, however, used in English, doubtless to avoid confusion with Roman Polanski's film of that name.

The main character is Erika Kohut, a professional pianist and a piano professor at a Vienna music conservatory. Outwardly Erika is a reserved, repressed and puritanical individual. Although she is already in her forties she still lives at home with her elderly, domineering mother; the two even share the same bed. We never see Erika's g father but learn that he is incarcerated in a psychiatric asylum. There is, however, a hidden side to her personality, first revealed when we see her acting as a Peeping Tom, spying on courting couples at a drive-in cinema. More of this hidden side is revealed when Erika begins a sexual relationship with a good-looking young pupil, Walter Klemmer. Although Walter is physically attracted to his teacher, he is repelled by her sadomasochistic tendencies, which leads to a curious love-hate relationship growing up between them.

Erika's speciality as a pianist is Schumann and Schubert; Schubert's music plays a particularly important part in the film. This struck me as very appropriate, as his music has always struck me, like that of Mozart, as being full of emotion but hiding it behind a veil of reserve, in contrast to the much more openly emotional and Romantic music of slightly later composers such as Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner. I felt, however, that the film rather pandered to the Hollywood myth of Schubert as a shy, ugly little man who poured into his music all the emotions he could not express in life; in reality he seems to have been a successful womaniser, even though he was far from handsome.

Isabelle Huppert is often compelling, and Annie Girardot is also good as Erika's witch-like mother, but this is not a film I cared for. In what is supposedly a character study far too much is left unexplained, such as the incident in which Erika deliberately injures one of her female students by putting broken glass in her coat pocket. In the violent sexual encounters between Erika and Walter it is never made clear whether he is abusing her or merely pandering to her masochistic tendencies. Haneke (who acted as scriptwriter as well as director) might think that this distinction does not matter, but I felt that it was very relevant to an understanding of Erika's character.

"The Piano Teacher" seems to have been intended as a dark, disturbing psychological study, but I found that it did not do much to explain Erika's behaviour except in terms of that old get-out "sexual repression"; there are doubtless many people who are sexually repressed, but most of them do not behave in the same way as Erika, who appears to be verging on the criminally insane. "The Piano Teacher" may be dark and disturbing, but it disturbs us to no good purpose and hides little of substance beneath its darkness. Having been greatly impressed by Haneke's more recent "The White Ribbon", I was very disappointed by this film. 4/10

In Vienna, Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) is a sick single forty years old piano teacher of the music conservatory. She lives alone with her dominative mother and due to her repressed sexuality, she self-mutilates her sex, visits porno shops in the nights looking for peep-shows and has a weird and abnormal behavior regarding sex. In a recital, Erika is introduced to Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel), an young student of engineering and excellent pianist, and he falls in love with her. Their perverted affair destabilizes the fragile emotional control of Erika. This weird tale of repressed sexuality of a woman has magnificent performances of Isabelle Huppert and Benoit Magimel, very well supported by Annie Girardort. The beginning of the story is amazing and Isabelle Huppert has one of the best performances of her stunning career, I even dare to say that it is one of her best roles. Although recommended only to specific audiences, this complex and sick love story is an excellent film. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival and the Austrian novelist Elfriede Jelinek won the 2004 Nobel Prize in literature two days ago. The direction of Michael Haneke is precise and sharp as usual. If 'Le Pianist' were an American movie, it would probably be among the IMDb Top 250. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): 'A Professora de Piano' (The Piano Teacher')

The Piano Teacher is a film that can be best described as, with approval of the film's director Michael Haneke, "obscene". It's "obscene" in many aspects from the pervert and masochistic sexual nature of the story to the technicals that surround the picture.

Of course, the mere premise, a piano teacher, who is sexually repressed by her overbearing mother, resorting to many sexually deviant fetishes is "obscene" enough, but it goes into a much deeper level as the story progresses.

The film is presented in many long takes. They are punctuated through and through by hard cuts and a soundtrack of Schubert pieces that is diegetic and miniscule. It's "obscene" through how simple and naked the technicals are compared to many Hollywood films and blockbusters.

These "obscenities" will turn off viewers who are opposed to the film's content and structure. But nevertheless, The Piano Teacher is clearly a well-made film with a clear vision from Michael Haneke.

The acting is great, especially the teacher and the mother and the new student as they pull her back and forth. The long takes are deep and beautiful, with excellent detail to the subtle actions of the film. And the soundtrack, while being limiting, breathes air into film whenever it appears. With the film being in French, it can be a bit tedious at points to follow along with the subtitles and the subtle imagery, but all-in-all, it should be easy to comprehend.

Whether you should see The Piano Teacher or not depends upon you taste. If you don't mind, it's a good film to take in and enjoy.

7/10 (Really, it's a 7.5)

In the first twenty minutes we are swept away by several powerfully portrayed emotions: a suffocating and overbearing mother has a violent argument with her live-in 40yr old daughter; a piano teacher (and professor of music)'s love for her pupils expressed in unswerving critical appraisal; the joy that music can inspire both in the listener and the performer. Within this short space of time our senses have been assaulted convincingly with very real characters. We are also swept away by powerfully performed music and shown the difference between great and mediocre performance with a lot of attention to nuance. Such material alone would have been the basis for an outstanding film of widespread appeal. But the trend in French cinema being what it is, it goes deeper, exploring the repressed sexuality of the teacher, the expression of sexual freedom and subsequent breakdown within a context of passionate attraction, and the inevitable cycle of real abuse. We are drawn to her suffering and, at least initially, wonder how much suffering may be related to the accomplishment of genius, particularly in the composers she admires. The Piano Teacher contains graphic dialogue and depictions of sex and brutality in scenes that some people might rather not watch. The scenes are essential to the dilemmas which the film seeks to raise and so can hardly be called gratuitous. A great film it may be, but mainstream viewing it is not.

Where was my dear old Andrew Sarris when I needed him? I went to the Rotten Tomatoes site, knowing that he would've said something cutting and efficient. But his review couldn't be accessed. A shame...I remember his terms like Antoniennui and his description of Siodmak. And they're apropos, let me tell you. This movie is very good. A great performance (as nearly always) by Huppert. Fairly serious use of classical music (although the use of the scherzo of the Schubert A major sonata as Walter's tool to impress Erika was a risible choice - a relatively "light" movement, and the performance of the Schubert trio was really lackluster). Lots of good things...But I have to mourn the death of the radical artist I thought (after seeing Funny Games) Haneke had the possibility of becoming. He chose instead to participate in the dissemination of one of the most exhausted tropes of world cinema: stylish perversion. Funny Games seemed to be a critique of Austrian society (and, by extension, society in general) from within: the manners, the politeness, the superciliousness, the "culture", the unostentatious ostentatiousness. It was brutal and unsentimental. This film is the "grown-up" version, ready for the feuilletons and the coffee - table discussions: what is masochism, really? When a woman is a masochist, and she chooses it, isn't she really the one in control?...blah, blah, blah. It's a film! Not a think piece in the Sunday paper! It's got the yummiest Art Direction I've seen in a long time. Every raincoat matches every wallpaper, and so on. Good taste! He's gonna go in the direction of Bertolucci without ever having made his "Conformist". And that's too bad! My advice to Michael: rent Pickup on South Street...but it's probably too late.

If you want to know how messed up people can get - not why but mostly the end result - this is a film for you. Otherwise, stand clear, for this is just a portrait of a really, really sick person that will leave a hole in your soul. Yes, we see how controlling the piano teacher's mother can be and so get some inkling of the roots of her depravity, but we know nothing of the teacher's history. So it's not a study of how someone becomes sado-masochistic which might have made this a more interesting psychological study.

How depraved can human beings get and do we really care? Movies with psychopaths or psychotics as main characters (unless they're really about those who respond to the madness) boil down to portraits of chaos and human depravity which is ubiquitous in our universe. Who needs 'art' to portray it? I'd rather watch a film that makes the audience think about something of value, even if it takes place on the wrong side of an ethical dilemma. La Pianiste isn't art nor entertainment but perverse voyeurism.