Why, when Erika finally gets what she's been asking for during the whole movie, does she suddenly become frigid? Another mystery is, what's wrong with Erika? The character Huppert plays is sick obviously, but it is the process of her performance in which her character unfolds like an onion that makes for a wonderful story here, and makes the ending obvious. The longer the film continues, the less interesting it gets. I'm talking of course about some people giving this film negative reviews on here. The image is an example of a ticket confirmation email that AMC sent you when you purchased your ticket. They speak German. Though it makes for rather unpleasant viewing, The Piano Teacher is a riveting and powerful psychosexual drama. They talk about music as if they understand it, they duel with their minds as well as their bodies, and Haneke photographs them in two kinds of spaces: Sometimes they're in elegant, formal conservatory settings, and at other times in frankly vulgar places where quick release can be snatched from strangers. This was a difficult watch but definitely worth it. Porn, self-loathing and Schubert in Cannes. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Maybe on Jupiter, where professors don't care if. If perfection is the only exaggerated nomenclature with which to describe Haneke and Huppert's sordid tango through considerations of submission and control, then it's surely embodied here in the form of Erika Kohut, the piano teacher. She is Erika Kohut, 40ish, a respected instructor at a conservatory of music in Vienna. Haneke is an exploitation filmmaker of the highest gifts. This 10-digit number is your confirmation number. It starts off well, once you accept Huppert as a dowdy 30 something spinster, and the scenes between mother and daughter are strong. She doesn't want to help her students however--she wants to destroy them. Vienna is in Austria. Her sexuality is an affair of morbid voyeurism and masochistic self-mutilation. Not long after, in one of the school's restrooms, they have a sexual encounter--all the more electrifying because while she shocks him with her brazen behavior, she refuses to actually have sex with him. Lonely and alienated, Erika finds solace by visiting sex shops and experimenting with masochism. She also mutilates herself. Demanding, severe, distant, unsmiling, she leads a secret life of self-mutilation. She wants the upper hand. |, December 16, 2019 92/100. By opting to have your ticket verified for this movie, you are allowing us to check the email address associated with your Rotten Tomatoes account against an email address associated with a Fandango ticket purchase for the same movie. Get the freshest reviews, news, and more delivered right to your inbox! Sidney Poitier’s 7 Most Memorable Performances, All Harry Potter Movies Ranked Worst to Best by Tomatometer. He doesn't play the standard movie character we'd expect in this role (the immature twentysomething boy who flowers under the tutelage of an older woman). So the masochistic heroine of The Piano Teacher was her perfect part, The Piano TeacherCannes film festival Rating: ****, Available for everyone, funded by readers. and Isabelle Huppert's piano teacher is the nearest to a one-note performance she's given in 20 years. May 2001. Huppert often plays repressed, closed-off, sexually alert women. Until one day, one of her students gets it into his head to seduce her... MK2 Productions, It's a harrowing, difficult film that's only for the most adventurous art-house movie fans. That she sleeps in the same bed with her domineering mother is no doubt a clue--but to what? It is depressing, ruthlessly pained and depraved, the movie equivalent of staring into an open wound. I interviewed her in 1977, asking her how she got her start in the movies. Watching Haneke's film is, aptly enough, a challenge and a punishment. I thought not. |, May 11, 2018 DVD/Blu-ray Release Calendar: September 2017. Vienna is in Austria. She delivers bizarrely perverse dialogue at times, but she is so convincing that the movie still maintains a deadly serious tone. Magimel won his best actor award for standing up to her force. Had someone less experienced been playing her role, the movie might have easily come off as laughable at best. This is a psychological study that rejects psychology, an erotic drama of surpassing coldness, and a story of amour fou in which the madness is calculated and the love frozen. Just leave us a message here and we will work on getting you verified. An amazing performance from Isabelle Huppert expressing strange sexual desires after a life of loneliness and a strange upbringing. What it does give us though, is perfect. Janice Y. K. Lee’s first novel, “The Piano Teacher,” opens with the newlywed Claire traveling to Hong Kong in 1951 with her husband, Martin, an engineer. | Rating: 3.5/4 For a director who's often raged against the manipulations of Hollywood, Haneke is as gifted a puppetmaster as Steven Spielberg.