The Piano Teacher (film)
| The Piano Teacher | |
|---|---|
 French promotional poster | |
| Directed by | Michael Haneke |
| Screenplay by | Michael Haneke |
| Starring | Isabelle Huppert Benoît Magimel |
| Cinematography | Christian Berger |
| Edited by | Monika Willi Nadine Muse |
| Music by | Martin Achenbach |
| Distributed by | Kino International |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 120 minutes |
| Countries | France Austria |
| Language | French |
| Budget | €3,000,000 |
| Box office | $13,897,768[1][2] |
The Piano Teacher (French: La Pianiste) is a 2001 film written and directed by Michael Haneke, starring Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Magimel. The film is based on the novel The Piano Teacher, by Elfriede Jelinek, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004.[3]
Plot
Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) is a piano professor at a Vienna music conservatory. Although already in her forties, she still lives in an apartment with her domineering mother (Annie Girardot); her father is a long-standing resident in a psychiatric asylum.
The audience is gradually shown truths about Erika's private life. Behind her assured façade, she is a woman whose sexual repression is manifested in a long list of paraphilias, including (but by no means limited to) voyeurism and sadomasochistic fetishes such as sexual self-mutilation, indicating symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder.
When Erika meets Walter Klemmer (Benoît Magimel), a charming 17-year-old engineering student from a middle class background, a mutual obsession develops. Even though she initially attempts to prevent consistent contact and even tries to undermine his application to the conservatory, he eventually becomes her pupil. Like her, he appreciates and is a gifted interpreter of Schumann and Schubert.
Erika destroys the musical prospects of an insecure but talented girl, Anna Schober, driven by her jealousy of the girl's contact with Walter — and also, perhaps, by her fears that Anna's life will mirror her own. She does so by hiding shards of glass inside one of Anna's coat pockets, damaging her right hand and ruining her aspirations to play at the forthcoming jubilee concert. Erika then pretends to be sympathetic when the girl's mother (Susanne Lothar) asks for advice on her daughter's recuperation. (The sub-plot of the pupil and her mother, mirroring the main relationship in the film, is absent in Jelinek's novel.) In a moment of dramatic irony, the girl's mother rhetorically asks Erika who could do something so evil.
Walter pursues Erika into a restroom immediately after she has secretly ruined her pupil's hand. Walter passionately kisses Erika even though she is rebuffing him. Erika finally responds to his passion, but insists on repeatedly controlling, humiliating and frustrating Walter, mirroring her own relationship with her mother.
Walter is increasingly insistent in his desire to start a sexual relationship with Erika, but Erika is only willing if he will satisfy her masochistic fantasies, which repulse him. The film climaxes, however, when he attacks her in her apartment in the fashion she let him know she desired, beating and then raping her, outside her mother's bedroom door. She is humiliated and orders him to leave.
The next day Erika takes a kitchen knife to the concert in which she is scheduled to fill in for the injured Anna. She delays going to the stage because she is desperate to see Walter, but Walter enters cheerful and laughing with Anna and her mother. Moments before the concert is due to start, Erika stabs herself superficially in the shoulder and exits the concert hall into the street. The implication is that further self-harm will ensue.
Cast
- Isabelle Huppert as Erika Kohut
- Annie Girardot as The Mother
- Benoît Magimel as Walter Klemmer
- Susanne Lothar as Mrs. Schober
- Udo Samel as Dr. Blonskij
- Anna Sigalevitch as Anna Schober
- Cornelia Köndgen as Mme Blonskij
- Thomas Weinhappel as Baritone
- Georg Friedrich as Man in drive-in
- Philipp Heiss as Naprawnik
- William Mang as Teacher
- Rudolf Melichar as Director
- Michael Schottenberg as Teacher
- Gabriele Schuchter as Margot
- Dieter Berner as Singing teacher
- Volker Waldegg as Teacher
- Martina Resetarits as Teacher
- Annemarie Schleinzer as Teacher
- Karoline Zeisler as Teacher
- Liliane Neiska as Secretary
- Luz Leskowitz as Violinist
- Viktor Teuflmayr as Pianist
- Viviane Bartsch as Woman in drive-in (as Vivian Bartsch)
- Florian Koban as Pupil
- Thomas Auner as Haydn pianist
- Noam Morgensztern as The first pupil (voice)
Critical reception
The film won a slew of awards on the European circuit, most notably the Grand Prix at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, with the two leads, Huppert and Magimel, winning Best Actress and Best Actor.
Awards
Won
- Grand Prix[4]
- Best Actress - Isabelle Huppert[4]
- Best Actor - Benoît Magimel[4]
- Best Supporting Actress - Annie Girardot
2002 German Film Awards
- Best Foreign Film
- Best European Actress - Isabelle Huppert
2002 L.A. Film Critics Association
- Best Actress (Runner-up) - Isabelle Huppert
2002 National Society of Film Critics
- Best Actress (Runner-up) - Isabelle Huppert
2001 Russian Guild of Film Critics
- Best Foreign Actress - Isabelle Huppert
- Best Foreign Film
2002 San Francisco Film Critics Circle
- SFFCC Award - Best Actress - Isabelle Huppert
2002 Seattle International Film Festival
- Golden Space Needle Award - Best Actress - Isabelle Huppert
Nominated
2002 Bafta Awards
- Best Film not in the English Language
2003 Bodil Awards
- Best Non-American Film
- Best Actress - Isabelle Huppert
- Best Foreign Language Film - Michael Haneke
- Best Foreign Language Film - Veit Heiduschka
- Best European Film
- Best European Screenplay - Michael Haneke
- Best Foreign Film
See also
References
- ^ http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=pianoteacher02.htm
- ^ http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/intl/?page=&wk=2001W38&id=_fLAPIANISTE01
- ^ Nobel Prize - 2004
- ^ a b c d "Festival de Cannes: The Piano Teacher". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-10-17.