Director: Michael Haneke
Writers: Michael Haneke, Elfriede Jelinek
Photography: Christian Berger
Music: Franz Schubert
Editors: Nadine Muse, Monika Willi
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoit Magimel, Anna Sigalevitch, Susanne Lothar, Udo Samel
The Piano Teacher was something of a sensation at the time of its release. It won awards from Cannes and elsewhere, often highlighting the performances of Isabelle Huppert as Erika Kohut, the sexualized, delusional piano teacher, and Benoit Magimel as Walter Klemmer, her talented student and lover (if that’s the right word). Erika is nearing middle age and lives a kind of bohemian life, a gifted pianist in her own right, who particularly loves Schubert and gives lessons to get by, but with an unusual way of life. She still lives with her mother, but she has a compulsive, adventurous private life, where fantasy and reality bleed into one another. We see her visiting some kind of discreet, semi-classy porn store, where she gets a private stall to watch a selection of videos. She finds a used tissue in the trash and holds it to her nose while she watches. Presumably some previous patron shot his load into it.
There’s more. We see her cutting herself in the bathroom, hanging out at a drive-in theater to peep people having sex in their cars—she squats down to masturbate, is caught, and must hurry away. She puts broken glass into the coat pocket of a student who suffers intense anxiety. Why is she doing these things? It’s possible they are in the original novel by Nobel prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, also called The Piano Teacher in translation—I don’t know it. But they also fit with various extremities by director and cowriter Michael Haneke, who seems prone to them, or certainly did in about this period, bracketed by the two virtually identical versions of his curious creep show Funny Games, one from 1997 and the second from 2007. Enter Walter Klemmer, an exceptional young pianist but an arrogant, immature young man, who represents much that Erika thinks she wants.
The Piano Teacher was something of a sensation at the time of its release. It won awards from Cannes and elsewhere, often highlighting the performances of Isabelle Huppert as Erika Kohut, the sexualized, delusional piano teacher, and Benoit Magimel as Walter Klemmer, her talented student and lover (if that’s the right word). Erika is nearing middle age and lives a kind of bohemian life, a gifted pianist in her own right, who particularly loves Schubert and gives lessons to get by, but with an unusual way of life. She still lives with her mother, but she has a compulsive, adventurous private life, where fantasy and reality bleed into one another. We see her visiting some kind of discreet, semi-classy porn store, where she gets a private stall to watch a selection of videos. She finds a used tissue in the trash and holds it to her nose while she watches. Presumably some previous patron shot his load into it.
There’s more. We see her cutting herself in the bathroom, hanging out at a drive-in theater to peep people having sex in their cars—she squats down to masturbate, is caught, and must hurry away. She puts broken glass into the coat pocket of a student who suffers intense anxiety. Why is she doing these things? It’s possible they are in the original novel by Nobel prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, also called The Piano Teacher in translation—I don’t know it. But they also fit with various extremities by director and cowriter Michael Haneke, who seems prone to them, or certainly did in about this period, bracketed by the two virtually identical versions of his curious creep show Funny Games, one from 1997 and the second from 2007. Enter Walter Klemmer, an exceptional young pianist but an arrogant, immature young man, who represents much that Erika thinks she wants.
Walter is drawn to her, but likely for the reason he is drawn to most females of all ages—the business of conquests and getting laid. He’s adolescent, not full grown, though he can connect with Erika on the level of music. In fact, the relief that music provides here to Walter, Erika, and all viewers is inestimable, particularly if you are already inclined toward Schubert. Music is likely the one thing for Erika that justifies everything. Perhaps it sends her fantasies soaring. Walter is intrigued. He seems to be wondering what sex with her would be like. But we know his type. It’s likely he will lose all interest in her once he has had her.
I have a theory that Haneke, at about the turn of the century, was keeping an eye on the strange developments in online chat culture, namely those related to BDSM. Erika has many of the hallmarks of an eager experimenter in the online arts and sciences of inflicting and enduring consensual pain. After a lengthy sexual encounter between Erika and Walter in a public bathroom, she starts dictating terms. Full of her own power, she controls the sex and Walter tends to go along with her, hoping to get to the orgasm part sooner.
“You’ll receive my instructions,” she says. And indeed, before long, she hands him a thick envelope and tells him to read the letter when he is alone, before they see each other again. He’s not interested in reading letters. It’s many pages of small print, describing all the ways she wants him to degrade her—slapping her around, abusing her in front of her mother, taking her whenever he wants, etc., etc. No safe words. Erika thinks she can get away with topping from the bottom (as they say, a common problem) and you’ll have to see this movie to see what it gets her. It’s nowhere pleasant and I’m not about to summarize it.
The Piano Teacher might be described as the tension between BDSM and reality going its inevitable directions, a splash of sickening cold water to the face. Not much about The Piano Teacher is pleasant, which is as intended. It is all cold and regimented and austere. Huppert gets to add it to her collection of brave roles, with Elle, White Material, La Ceremonie, etc. Haneke gets to add it to his collection of grotesques, which he finally outgrew but never entirely lost the taste for. See also: Amour, The White Ribbon.
I have a lot of questions about why the things that happen in The Piano Teacher happen, but I also know why I’m here. Haneke is just good at making movies. Something about his self-possessed, lucid style usually wins me over. He may be an eccentric or even downright perverse filmmaker, but you can also sense just from the composition if his shots that he knows what he’s doing. He’s also another that is often accused of mocking their audience—and there’s a reasonable case for it in Funny Games anyway. But I can’t help appreciating how much work has to go into making his movies so compulsively watchable. At the same time, I wish he had managed to put a little more substance into The Piano Teacher, which mostly strikes me as a somewhat mocking (there’s that idea again that he’s laughing at us) cautionary tale about BDSM. That might be of value to a certain proportion of viewers, but it’s likely a small minority.
I have a theory that Haneke, at about the turn of the century, was keeping an eye on the strange developments in online chat culture, namely those related to BDSM. Erika has many of the hallmarks of an eager experimenter in the online arts and sciences of inflicting and enduring consensual pain. After a lengthy sexual encounter between Erika and Walter in a public bathroom, she starts dictating terms. Full of her own power, she controls the sex and Walter tends to go along with her, hoping to get to the orgasm part sooner.
“You’ll receive my instructions,” she says. And indeed, before long, she hands him a thick envelope and tells him to read the letter when he is alone, before they see each other again. He’s not interested in reading letters. It’s many pages of small print, describing all the ways she wants him to degrade her—slapping her around, abusing her in front of her mother, taking her whenever he wants, etc., etc. No safe words. Erika thinks she can get away with topping from the bottom (as they say, a common problem) and you’ll have to see this movie to see what it gets her. It’s nowhere pleasant and I’m not about to summarize it.
The Piano Teacher might be described as the tension between BDSM and reality going its inevitable directions, a splash of sickening cold water to the face. Not much about The Piano Teacher is pleasant, which is as intended. It is all cold and regimented and austere. Huppert gets to add it to her collection of brave roles, with Elle, White Material, La Ceremonie, etc. Haneke gets to add it to his collection of grotesques, which he finally outgrew but never entirely lost the taste for. See also: Amour, The White Ribbon.
I have a lot of questions about why the things that happen in The Piano Teacher happen, but I also know why I’m here. Haneke is just good at making movies. Something about his self-possessed, lucid style usually wins me over. He may be an eccentric or even downright perverse filmmaker, but you can also sense just from the composition if his shots that he knows what he’s doing. He’s also another that is often accused of mocking their audience—and there’s a reasonable case for it in Funny Games anyway. But I can’t help appreciating how much work has to go into making his movies so compulsively watchable. At the same time, I wish he had managed to put a little more substance into The Piano Teacher, which mostly strikes me as a somewhat mocking (there’s that idea again that he’s laughing at us) cautionary tale about BDSM. That might be of value to a certain proportion of viewers, but it’s likely a small minority.
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