The Piano Teacher

REVIEW
Huppert delivers the most compelling portrayal of profound emotional disintegration since Jeanne Dielman as Erika, a well-respected professor of music and teacher of a master class in piano. Erika lives with her domineering, overbearing mother (Girardot); she has her own room in the flat they share, yet she sleeps in her mother’s bed. Erika’s claustrophobic existence is both ameliorated and exacerbated by the control she exercises over her students and her uncompromising, obsessional relationship with the music to which she’s devoted. Enter Walter (Magimel), a young, vigorous sciences student with the audacity to audition for Erika’s master class as an elective. Walter’s range of interests and enjoyments are in stark contrast to Erika’s narrowness of focus; his natural enthusiasms a threatening counterpoint to her scrupulous obsessions. Confrontation is inevitable, and her secret vices and self-imposed penances are no longer adequate release. Haneke’s effective, arresting direction delivers a covert evocation of Erika’s indefatigable inner demons, allowing full expression to Huppert’s commanding and forceful creation. The Piano Teacher manifests a palpable anxiety as it shows the prosaic commonplaces of day-to-day life interspersed with the intellectual and sensual stimulation of magnificent music — as the ridiculous often mixes with the divine. The sumptuous score creates a protective, modulating screen between the viewer and the brutal emotional content. (French with English subtitles)