La Pianiste

Haneke's `Seventh Continent' is the most depressing movie I've seen in my whole life but after `La Pianiste' I would not want to miss anything this uncompromising Austrian director does. I'm not sure the movie would work without the great, haughty, fierce, indomitable, unforgettable Isabelle Huppert. Often Huppert has been cold and cruel and elegant and desirable, but never has she been so sick and twisted as here, and she goes the limit. There is no more fearless and confident actress in movie history and none I'd go so out of my way to watch.

I gritted my teeth and entered the theater expecting no fun. The opening credits won me over, though. The way the sound ends when the names come on, between each vignette, show an ability to make you take notice, to make the routine fresh. Each vignette is different; in each Erika Kohut, the piano teacher (Huppert) is cruel to another piano student in a different way. I could see something compulsively watchable coming. When the razor-in-the-bathroom scene came, I looked away: I'd been warned. Then I peeked: it wasn't so bad. Most of all, it was swift and methodical; she's as dispassionately cruel toward herself as she is toward others. It's a job to get done in time for dinner: mom's calling.

Besides Huppert, the young actor who plays Walter Klemmer (Benoît Magimel) is remarkable. Like his character, he appears ordinary, good but not great looking, too confident, boringly relaxed, but he surprises you by keeping up with Huppert every step of the way just as his character does. These two come together in ways I've not seen before on screen. The transgressive sex scenes are surprising from minute to minute and both characters are dynamic beyond all expectation. Both are conceived as contradictions. Erika is brilliant about music, insane about human relations. Walter is a normal guy, a hockey coach, a future engineer, but he plays piano recklessly and brilliantly and his musical thinking is mature. He is ready for the battleground that is Huppert's Erika and when they clash in horrible sexual warfare, both are changed. He pops back, but is drawn into her sadomasochistic games. She loses it and is going through a series of meltdowns, yet she remains visibly enough in control to be expected to play piano at a major recital when she has disabled her female student. Huppert is remarkable, but Magimel is completely authentic in all the most intense and ruthlessly intimate sex scenes: he knows exactly what he needs to do.

`La Pianiste' in other words is actor-driven, so when it won the Grand Prize at Cannes it was inevitable that Huppert and Magimel would get the Best Actress and Best Actor awards. It's hard to conceive the movie without them. The Grand Prize also signals recognition of Haneke as a major European filmmaker. Is it a desire to transcend his Austrian culture and become more pan-European that has led him to make his last two movies in French, and set `Code Unknown,' also a controversial film, in Paris? Why specifically does everyone in `La Pianiste,' which takes place mainly at the Vienna Conservatory, speak French? To accommodate Huppert? To modulate the cold Teutonic tone of the Austrian novel the movie's based on? Or perhaps – my theory – to make the whole story more abstract – because it's not just about sadomasochistic craziness but about cloying family ties, frustration, and abusive mentors, especially piano teachers? Rumor has it that piano teachers are sometimes as cruel as this. They just don't have Huppert's chutzpah, froideur, and elegant sexiness. In a way this is a fantasy about what a really, really mean piano teacher might be like in her spare time if our worst nightmares about her were true. This story is, certainly, about our worst nightmares, our repressions, the things we've imagined that we don't want to talk about, the sickness in our relationship with our mother and with our lovers. To deal with desperation and human limits is not to step away completely from everyday experience but to examine it under a microscope. Haneke takes us to places we have been before in our minds and in our emotions.

Walter (Magimel) is the voice of normality. He's a nice guy, a friendly, self confident, healthy, helpful athlete: he's a little like Wayne Gretsky. But though he laughs when he reads Erika's kinky, sick instructions for their sexual relations, then tells her she disgusts him and he will have no more to do with her, he's in love with her, so he winds up little by little starting to follow the instructions in spite of himself. Because of his admiration and love, he becomes another person. `La Pianiste' is about crossing the line, losing control in a world (like a conservatory of music) where control is the watchword. Walter laughs for us; he expresses our discomfort with Erika's insanity, and thus, as over-the-top as the movie becomes, we stay with it and disquietingly within it.

This is a transgressive analysis of emotion that's true to general human experience. I've been emotionally strung out with a lover (who hasn't?) and all this craziness spoke to my own emotional memories. `La Pianiste' has disgusting things in it, and I'm no masochist – not even as a moviegoer – but this is a terrific movie, perhaps a great one.

The Piano Teacher (2001)

This is a difficult movie. It's difficult to watch at times, if you take it seriously. But I think it was difficult to film, to write, to act.

The premise is subtle even if it sounds sensational--show the inner mind and inner life of a brilliant woman who is mentally ill. She has compulsive issues, I think, and sexual repression that has led her to masochistic and finally sadistic extremes. She is admirable in some external way for her self-control which reads, to an outsider, as cold precision, the kind needed to be an extraordinary classical pianist.

But the movie takes us inside her life, first to the unhealthy relationship with her mother, then the oddly stern and indifferent role she takes with her advanced students. Finally there is a young man who sees only her ability, and her external beauty. (This woman, Erika, is played by the incomparable Isabelle Huppert.) He is a pianist of unusual talent, but he wants not to concertize, but to live life. He plays hockey. He has friends. He smiles warmly. He is, in short, a healthy normal and rather handsome young man.

And he falls for Erika. This is where the movie gets weirder and weirder, but also more challenging. They play an intense game of sexual chicken, at first, and lots of head games. He knows she's superior to him in some way--older, more severe---but he has no idea about her slanted view of life and of sex. He wants her. He becomes a pupil of hers just for that reason. She pretends not to care, or to rebuff him (in part this isn't pretense because she's afraid). Finally a couple of serious and demented confrontations occur.

And things unravel in a very interesting way. Some people will find it simply sick and unwatchable. It also happens very slowly--if the film has an obvious flaw, it's the pace. It's in love with itself far too much. But if you get into that flow, and can take the pain that will rise up, then you will at least be greatly affected. That's more than most movies can say.

It's all quite in ernest. I don't think it's a bit campy or playing games with the viewer. It's really trying to get at this woman's psyche--and the young man's, since he gets in deeper than he intended. It's filmed with terrific planning and visual panache. And it makes some kind of deranged sense, too. In fact, there are probably more people in these kinds of situations than I'll even know, and to them I say give this a careful look.

Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) has a volatile home life with her combative mother leading to violence at times. Erika has disturbing sexual tendencies such as porn shop visits, self-mutilations, and voyeurism. She's a piano professor at a conservatory. She's hard on her students especially the fragile Anna Schober. Walter Klemmer is a new student at the conservatory despite her objection. He's taken with her and she eventually lets him into her sexually disturbed world.

Isabelle Huppert has such great screen presence. She's great at playing damaged, vulnerable, and cold. It's not the most fun watch. There are a couple of really weird scenes. Her relationship with her mother is outrageous. This is an interesting character study of a troubled woman.

'The Piano Teacher' is the third Haneke movie I've seen. I didn't like the other two ('Funny Games' I thought was a cop out and 'Code Unknown' a bore) so I expected little from this one. However I was wrong to prejudge it. It's a very good movie, powerful, thought provoking and features a superb performance from Isabelle Huppert. She plays a Erika Kohut, a brilliant but highly repressed pianist. Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel) is a young man who is very sure of himself who attempts to seduce her. The thing is she is a deeply disturbed individual and he can't cope when her true nature is uncovered. I don't want to go into any great detail about Erika or her mental state. The movie reveals this slowly and beautifully. I was impressed that there was no attempt at pop psychology or pat explanations that you would expect in a Hollywood melodrama with similar subject matter. Huppert is extraordinary throughout. I can't think of many contemporary Hollywood actresses who could have played this role as convincingly. 'The Piano Teacher' is not for those who can't face the dark side of human nature. It's far from being a life affirming "feel good" movie. If the difficult subject matter of 'Irreversible' or 'The War Zone' interested you then this is your kind of movie. I can't say I "enjoyed" it, but it was a worthwhile, rewarding experience and how often do you get to say that these days?

Why is it that Freud was always talking about hating your father? Mommies do the best job of screwing you up, and Erica's (Isabelle Huppert) mom is a doozy.

Huppert can always be counted upon to give an incredible performance, and she is superb here in the painful-to-watch film. She is carrying an incredible amount of psychological baggage, and it really affects her emotionless life. She is looking for love, but only finds seduction. Part of the problem is hers as she has no concept of what love is. She has a warped sense of S&M that she supposes is love, but when faced with reality, she is shocked and cold.

I should warn you that the ending is certainly unconventional, but the film is unconventional as well, so it fits.