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The Piano Teacher [2001] [DVD]

The Piano Teacher [2001] [DVD]Director: Michael Haneke
Actors: Annie Girardot, Benoît Magimel, Susanne Lothar, Udo Samel, Anna Sigalevitch
Studio: Artificial Eye
Category: DVD

List Price: £19.99
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Seller: lady-kidderminster
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars 20 reviews
Sales Rank: 16,955

Format: Colour, PAL, Subtitled, Widescreen
Languages: English (Unknown), French (Unknown)
Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Region: 2
Discs: 1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 129 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6

EAN: 5021866214306
ASIN: B00006422Z

Release Date: May 27, 2002
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.co.uk Review
An unexpected critical (Grand Prix at Cannes) and commercial (three months in London's West End) success on its release in 2001, The Piano Teacher is a provocative, but ultimately frustrating, film. The intensifying relationship between Erika Kohut, a Viennese piano teacher whose musical focus is gradually undone by sexual repression, and Walter Klemmer, her uninhibited but unsuspecting student and admirer, lacks an underlying motivation, either physical or emotional, to sustain the tortuous encounters of the film's later stages.

Director Michael Haneke powerfully evokes the claustrophobic décor of the flat that Kohut shares with her dictatorial yet ineffectual mother, with whom her relationship progresses from the pitiful to the farcical. And farce of the blackest kind is what the film descends to, as Kohut and Klemmer play out a vicious game of sado-masochistic control with an intriguing but indecisive conclusion.

Isabelle Huppert is magnificently assured as Kohut, but Benoît Magimel often seems confused as Klemmer, while Annie Girardot resorts to a caricature of the mother. Fans of classical piano will enjoy the masterclass and rehearsal sequences during the first hour, though music is then relegated to a minor role--its deeper relevance to the film being ultimately difficult to define. English subtitles are provided, and the monochrome shades in which the scenes abound come through with suitably wan intensity. Yet it's hard not to feel that a more profound inquiry into the darker side of sexual desire has been lost along the way. --Richard Whitehouse

Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
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4 out of 5 stars A disturbing and sad film   February 4, 2010
ChrisG
This is another excellent movie from Michael Haneke - technically brilliant the director is unsurpassed in his ability to create a menacing atmosphere and laying out the darker side of human nature. And yet who could enjoy this film - it is topical in an age where porn is just about the most easily accessible commodity on the planet, it is brilliantly made but it is an overwhelmingly miserable film.

In many ways this is not so much a film as a study into the psychopathology of sexual obsession and deviancy. The main protagonist lives in a narrow world- an exceptional pianist defined by excellence in her profession and admiration amongst the cognoscenti and her ability to make judgments based on the ability of those who do not quite match up to the standards that she sets herself, standards that we know she herself probably does not match up to either. Behind this is a pushy mother - the relationship is deeply manipulative as we can see from the start and thoroughly unhealthy - the scenes of mother and daughter sleeping side by side are as disturbing as any of the more graphic episodes in the film. And there is no father figure to provide any balance. Inside this vacuum and an environment thoroughly lacking in any warmth angst festers and love is completely absent. This makes the explicit and seedy behaviour that we witness later in the film appear thoroughly plausible and disturbing. It is not so much the behaviour per se that shocks, but its natural emergence in the right conditions. Its effects are predictably destructive.

This is a topical film and brilliant in many ways. However it is so miserable that I find it difficult to recommend. Haneke has made several brilliant movies - Hidden and the White Ribbon stand out as thought provoking and dazzling even if they too are by no means cheerful. The Piano Teacher is on the same level, but given the distubring and graphic subject matter I would think twice about watching it - certainly not one for the faint-hearted.


1 out of 5 stars Not titilating in the slightest   July 10, 2009
Guinevere ffrench (Exmoor, England)
0 out of 6 found this review helpful

For those who had unrequieted feelings for some coldly, stern but beautiful/handsome authority figure in their youth - this ain't the film for you. I nodded off during the screening but my partner assures me the S & M element was brutal and sickening. Not my bag at all. One suspects it would not have gained any credibility as an 'art' film were it not subtitled. Most of us must surely have grown out of the naive notion that something is wiser and more profound simply because it is said in French - not the distributors of this film, evidently.


3 out of 5 stars The Piano Teacher   May 13, 2009
technoguy (Rugby)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

Haneke or Jelinek,Erika or Huppert,Strauss or sex.Which ever you think is the uppermost in any of these pairings will decide what you think of the film.We are presented with a notoriously dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship based on domination-subjugation centred on the mother's needs.She controls her daughter's life like a prison officer,where there is piano playing on the timetable.The mother invades her daughter's space,controlling her every movement so that she can only earn money as a Piano Teacher, which she has to do to enable them to move into a bigger flat.Erika's(Huppert's) only escape from this cruel perfectionism of the great Austrian composers is sadomasochism and voyeuristic perversity, maleporn,sniffing semen-soaked tissues,urinating by young lover's cars,self-mutilation.All this in place of natural relations of a loving kind,lack of connection to other women and lack of knowledge of her own body.Her father's in a mental institution.Now Haneke tackles this by introducing a top Euro art actress(Huppert)who specializes in perverse roles.He also integrates Strauss and Schubert musical pieces into the drama so music-playing is integral.What he loses from the linguistically spectacular novel(a lot) he makes up for in the music with background analysis by Erika.So the suffering and control of
playing great music sets the template for what Erika is looking for in sex.She meets Walter,who dandy and narcissitic,enters through the musical door of her prison cell as a novice musician,fancies she'd make a great conquest.He doesn't know what he's let himself in for:
her lists of demands - what she perversely wants him to do to her.This disgusts him but she keeps him hanging on.He thinks that if he beats her up and rapes her he's doing what she wants.No-just the opposite.She
doesn't realise that she cannot control the great chaos of sex.All her musical training has brought her self loathing and torture.She regains control at the end by stabbing herself and going back to 'life' with mother. The film although precise and beautifully filmed leaves a sense of incompleteness.You feel somehow Huppert's dare in taking the role becomes a parade of perversities of 'the only actress who could do this role'.A kind of exploitation of the viewer and a sense of a highly-wrought contrivance.The mother incidentally is an extension of the
patriarchal Austrian state.




5 out of 5 stars Stellar director, Stellar performances. Beautiful, yet disturbing film.   May 12, 2009
a1ex8 (Leeds, U.K.)
What a superb film. I've watched this film three times now, and am still dumbfounded by Michael Haneke's delicate precision to detail and stellar directorial skill.

Not a light-hearted film in the slightest; far from it, The Piano Teacher focuses on the life of a sexually repressed, masochistic Piano teacher named Erika Kohut played beautifully by Isabelle Huppert.

Erika is a Piano professor of a music conservatory in Vienna who, although still in her late forties, lives with her incredibly domineering elderly mother (Annie Girardot) in a small apartment.

Undoubtedly mentally ill, Erika is only able to 'feel' by inflicting bestial punishments upon her students, and people close to her.

Only able to gain sexual pleasure from inflicting pain upon herself, and participating in voyeuristic activities, Erika meets a young, handsome pianist named Walter (Benoit Magimel), who quickly falls in love with her, but soon realises he is unable to indulge in her violent fantasies, but is also unable to pull himself away from her.

Isabelle Huppert as usual playes Erika with a great amount of emotion and maturity, and Benoit Magimel (previously a fairly unknown actor) as Walter is completely fantastic. What a breakthrough.

I must emphasise; this is not a film for all, due to a fairly disturbing plot, and at times graphic images (commonplace in many Haneke films).

Excellent.




4 out of 5 stars Excellent   April 14, 2009
Adroit (UK)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful

Isabelle Huppert performance makes this film. She's one of the finest actresses in the world.

Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
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