Review of The Piano Teacher (2001) by Viniciusbrito — 11 Dec 2018

La Pianiste.

A piano teacher that works in a conservatory, still lives with her mother even with her advanced age and is heavily repressed by the mom, she tries to escape of that repression in different ways, and when one of her students start to fall in love for her, she sees one possibility to change things, wich is full of surprises. Directed and written by Michael Haneke.

This movie is really heavy and disturbing in many ways, ant it doesn't try to hide it in any way, it doesn't try to camouflage it and calmly deliver the story in the way that it is supposed to be, like other movies do, in La Paniste, since the very beginning from the movie we can already have a nice image of how things gonna go, and it is troublesome in a familiar way and in a psychologically that automatically ends up affecting physically as well, this is definely not for everybody, it is a rough journey. The narrative is, yes, calmly giving away the level of the disturbing, so you know since the beginning that it isn't a convetional movie, but it easily give to us how much of it is in here, and a little by a little we got surprises by how much affected the mind of the character really is and how she deal with it, inch by inch things got a little darker, as soon as you start to see how does the character of Erika deal with some situations, where does she go, and what she do, things can get even creepy, she went to sex shops and porn cinemas, or wathever that was, doing things that is sad, simply sad and strane at least. While things get on and you see what kind of relationship she wants, you kind of get as surprise as the character, and his reaction is disappointment, and how he deal with this is just horrible, and things, that already was been very graphics, got even more, and maybe, just maybe, a bit to much. They were pretty good in showing how desperate she was, the development of her character is great, you see the sadomasochism in action with her, and also the necessity and ampare, where she would do anything for someone that says that love her, because she needs to escape.

I think that this movie is important for us to notice how inconceivable mind situations can be and reach, I think that it got pretty obvious in the movie that the way that her mother controls her in everything, a thing that probably happens since forever, is what have caused the disturbances in Erika mind, someone that get controlled and disrespected during her whole life by some terrible ways will surely get situations in the brain where it will hurt and suffer a lot, the mother controlling what she dresses, what time she goes to where, screaming and attacking, Erika surely feels tied in by that house and that woman, her mind is painful and very noisy, wich is why I believe that she have chosen the career of a musician, because when you are hearing loud things, the voices that comes and goes in the mind got a bit muffled, so it is easier to relax and in concentrate in something else. This together with the pain in the body, a lot of people cut themselves, so as the character of Erika that sometimes during the course of the movie hurt herself physically, this happens clearly for the same reason, for the pain in the skin and in the flesh be so big for then, somehow, hide the pain in the mind, because she is already tired of it and can't stand living with it the whole time. All of this happens without people in her day to day life notice anything, there are just emotion situation that you can get from her, wich would be, angry and perhaps a bit of antipathy, together with all of it was already said, all caused by the situation in her home.

Isabelle Huppert is amazing, she can express so much with so little, she in a lot of moments don't really need to speak to say something, I think she was able to pass that idea of traumatized with her eyes, and small expressions, like a pokerface with a background full of sad things, in other moments that she actually talk, she can be emotional less with other people, not giving empathy to others, or really bossy, saying things that you actually believe, or in other moments a regret that you can say that it is a bit exaggerated, but it is intentional, because in her mind that was all of what could "free" her, she was fantastic and scary. Benoît Magimel at first is just a boy who likes and play well paino, yet he starts to be very charming with Erika, very dominated by her, and then he became something completely out of mind, he is scary and nasty in a not predictable way, he was also very good. Annie Girardot can be also very scary and mean, so as at the same time, kind of caring, it is complex.

The music and the mise-en-scène in this movie is just fabulous, things are so well putted to give an alive and complete aspect to each place.

A movie that surely runs out from the standard movies that we have seen.