La Pianiste aka The Piano Teacher, written and directed by Michael Haneke, based on the novel by Elfriede Jelinek, 9 out of 10

La Pianiste aka The Piano Teacher, written and directed by Michael Haneke, based on the novel by Elfriede Jelinek

9 out of 10

Notes and thoughts on other books are available at:

-              https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEVa4_CsRStSBBDo4uJWT8BSWtTTn0N1E and   http://realini.blogspot.ro/

La Pianiste is a provocative, impressive motion picture.

If it is much too daring for both the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes, it won acclaim at the more important:

-          Cannes Film Festival, where it won Best Actor, Best Actress and the Grand Jury prizes, the latter unanimously

In fact, as far as I could see, Michael Haneke has not directed or written something that is not astounding and challenging:

-          Cache, Funny Games, The White Ribbon, Amour are not mainstream in any possible way

Apart from the magnificent, brave, intriguing director, the cast is also led by three phenomenal artists:

-          Isabelle Huppert- probably sharing the best title of best actress in the world with Meryl Streep

-          Annie Girardot and Benoit Magimel complete the trio that takes this Piano Teacher to  extremes

Isabelle Huppert is Erika Kohut, a Piano Teacher and Pianist.

I think the adaptation for the English speaking market may actually distort the significance of the original title…

Erika Kohut is not just The Piano Teacher…maybe not even defined by that aspect of her life.

La Pianiste would refer to the fact that she plays the piano, not that she teaches…

It is of course a complex story that is mind boggling in some of its scenes that present graphic sex scenes.

Erika Kohut does teach, but she is both an accomplished and a failed teacher in my view, because of what she does to a student.

Or maybe some of her students: for one, she prepares a trap, for another, she uses aggresivity because they meet in…a sex shop.

As for the third and most important, this is Walter Klemmer aka Benoit Magimel and the relationship ventures into…BDSM.

Erika Kohut has a love hate interaction with her mother, portrayed with enormous talent by Annie Girardot.

That aspect and other troubling features in past history may explain the deviation in the attitude of this apparently sensitive music lover.

She is frequenting sex shops, where she enters private rooms and she watches explicit porn videos shared with us, the audience…

Incredibly, the heroine takes from the waste baskets in these premises used tissues and keeps them on her nose…

This is actually just part of the extreme erotic game that is proposed by this complex human being that mutilates herself.

When she gets involved with her student, Walter Klemmer, she does the most unbelievable things to him and herself.

Walter is infatuated with her- I do not believe that he loves her, even at the beginning- and when he kisses the older woman, she takes his penis and first starts to masturbate him, then starts felatio that she abandons.

The frustrated young man is vociferous, then in pain and this is evidently a game of inflicting and receiving pain, in which Erika first claims the authority, then gives away the initiative and writes the most ludicrous proposals…

An approximate rendition of the exchange would have her say: <<Make me suffer, sit on top of me, kick my stomach and make me stick my tongue into your behind…>>

-          As Bad as It Gets?

-          Well, not exactly, for this becomes really violent, with real blows and kicks, even pushing around the mother…