La pianista

If you think piano teacher Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) in Michael Haneke's film "LA PIANISTE" is the ultimate degree in the personification of derangement, perversion and darkness, I've got news for you: the piano teacher in Elfriede Jellinek's novel "LA PIANISTE" (on which the film was based) is twice as "repulsive", "disgusting", "deranged" and even more fascinating -- though there can't be words enough to translate the level of artistic proficiency that Isabelle Huppert has reached here, above all other mortal actresses in activity today. And who else could have played this character with such emotional power, complete with the best piano playing/dubbing an actor could deliver?

In the novel as in the film, there are two big antagonists to the "heroine" Kohut: her own mother (wonderful, wreck-voiced Annie Girardot, in a part originally intended for Jeanne Moreau) and Austria itself. The mother personifies Jellinek's perception of her native Austria as a country that deceptively and perversely encourages racist/fascist (or at least authoritarian) behavior, sexual and emotional repression, and, let's say, übermensch ideals which are impossible to keep today without the danger of a mental breakdown.

"La Pianiste" also deals with a very powerful and delicate issue: how dangerous it is to reveal your innermost fantasies to the one (you think) you love. We tend to think our own sexual fantasies must be as exciting to others as they are to ourselves, which may turn out to be a huge, embarrassing and sometimes tragic mistake. Here, Kohut learns (?) the lesson in the most painful and humiliating of ways.

It must be mentioned that Elfriede Jellinek is one of the best-known and praised authors in Austria and Europe (well, now she's got a Nobel Prize!) and that autobiographical passages can be inferred in her novel, as she herself was a pianist and had a reportedly difficult relationship with her mother. The novel also includes long passages about Kohut's childhood and adolescence so you kind of understand how she turned into who she is now. Haneke chose to hide this information in the film, forcing us to wonder how she got to be that way (don't we all know a Erika Kohut out there?). But he very much preserves the fabric of the book in his film: unbearable honesty, to the point where most secretive, "horrendous" feelings painfully emerge -- envy, cruelty, violence, jealousy, hate, misery, sadism, masochism, selfishness, perversion etc. All of them unmistakably human.

I thought "La Pianiste" was a deeply moving film, very disturbing and thought-provoking, with a handful of unforgettable scenes, and that's just all I ask of movies. It also made me buy and be thrilled by the book, discover a fantastic author I hadn't read before, and listen again and again to Schubert - so, my thanks to Haneke, Jellinek and Isabelle!!! On the other hand, if you're looking for light entertainment, please stay away. My vote: 9 out of 10

Definitely NOT for the faint-of-heart or for those seeking passive entertainment, this film is a masterpiece of portraiture of a highly talented and disturbed artist – a perfect illustration of the idea that genius is considered but a short step from insanity.

It has been many months since I viewed this film, and I find myself turning the film over in my head quite often. That – to me – is the mark of a well-done film – or any work of art, for that matter.

I have never since seen a prodigiously talented performer without wondering what their day-to-day life and relationships must be like. This film stayed with me despite my revulsion to its "ugliness" – the discomfiture it engenders.

Highly recommended!

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.

To be honest I had to go have a stiff drink after this film; I felt drained and my shoulders were knotted. I also had to talk the whole thing out with the friend I saw it with for a good half hour. Whatever else this movie is, it's not dull - you have to have respect for anything that produces such a visceral reaction, even if you couldn't claim to have 'enjoyed' the experience. (Anyone else I've talked to who's seen it has responded in much the same way.)

The reason the film is so powerful is not simply because it deals with unpalatable subject-matter like sado-masochism and violently dysfunctional relationships - that on its own would leave no defence against a charge of exploitation. It packs a punch because whatever her deeply ingrained character flaws, however reprehensible her behaviour (and at one point that's VERY), the piano teacher Erika always retains your sympathy - you never forget the type of influences which might have made her what she is, while scenes as subtle as the one where she walks down a street of shoppers, being casually bumped into without apology, remind you of her utter isolation. Isabelle Huppert's performance is as brilliant as it is uncomfortable and I can't even imagine how she might have wound down after a day's filming.

Appalling, compelling, horribly funny at times, but ultimately deeply despairing look at how people damage each other. View with caution.

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.