La Pianiste aka the Piano Teacher
The Piano Teacher Director: Michael Haneke, Austria/France/Germany, 2001, 129 minutes, 35mm Outwardly, Professor Erika Kohut is a strict piano teacher and Schubert scholar at the Vienna Conservatory. She lives with her domineering mother. Inwardly, Erika is a sexually repressed single woman who visits porn shops and mutilates herself. When Erika meets Walter Klemmer, who is smitten by her, the two start a relationship with Erika in total control. One of the stand-out films at the Christchurch 26th International Film Festival, The Piano Teacher deservedly won Isabelle Huppert a best actress award at Cannes for her brilliant portrayal of a demanding, unsmiling martinet. The Piano Teacher is based on the 1983 novel by Elfriede Jelinek. Few actresses would consent to make huffing old semen such ladylike, delicate business, but Huppert is a rare and dazzling talent, a fearless actress of seemingly limitless range. It takes guts to play it this cold, to refuse the audience's charity. Jelinek writes of Erika, 'This woman has not a spark of submission,' and to Huppert's credit, there isn't a hint of submission or compromise in her performance. Manohla Dargis, LA Weekly Internet Movie Database listing
|
||||||||||||