Review of The Piano Teacher (2001) by Nesbitt10 — 02 Feb 2013

In Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher," which won three awards at Cannes 2001 (best actress, actor and film), Isabelle Huppert plays the role of a bold, conflicted woman named Erika Kohut. Erika is approaching middle age-she is a highly respected and equally demanding instructor at the conservatory of music in Vienna. Erika is stone cold--distant, unsmiling, she leads a secret life of self-mutilation. In the classroom she sits without emotion, but listens attentively to her students. She doesn't want to help her students however--she wants to destroy them.

Erika lives with her domineering mother, who is immediately subjected to her mother's demanding questions the minute she walks through the door. We quickly realize Erika is completely manipulated and owned by her mother's invasive possessiveness. Instantly Erika resorts to behaving like a child, or a rebellious teenager at best. They both sleep in the bed together. Her mother (a chillingly unsympathetic Annie Girardot), complains and is bitter about money Erika is squandering. Pleading, shouting, and violence is followed by brief tearful apologies--and it is obvious that this is a well-worn habitual pattern. She intrusively rings Erika when she is rehearsing, and apparently has no life of her own. Enter Walter Klemmer (Benoît Magimel), who is a handsome, self-assured student who auditions for her class and is forthright in his attraction to her. She responds coldly then demands he let her lead. Then she changes the role with a detailed letter, inviting him into her dark, twisted fantasies. The sex scenes within the movie, while not graphic, are long, uncomfortable--and psychologically brutal. The movie goes to a place of mad masochism. At a certain point we begin to feel that the director, the characters, and the actors will take this anywhere--there are no boundaries. Erika is not simply an adventuress, or a sexual experimenter--Erika is a psychological train wreck. Walter's dreams and thoughts about an experienced older woman have turned into nightmares about interactions and scenarios he doesn't even want to know about.

Erika is a highly respected professor at the prestigious Vienna conservatory, who just happens to spend her free time visiting pornography dens and mutilating her genitals. The women is a ticking time bomb that's on the verge of exploding at any given point. Some audience members will dislike the ending, but with a film like this any conventional ending would be a cop-out. Ultimately, "The Piano Teacher" is a disturbing portrait of a woman in power coming undone before our very eyes.