''The Piano Teacher'' (french: La Pianiste, lit=The Pianist) is a 2001
erotic
Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, scul ...
psychological drama
Psychological drama or psychodrama is a sub-genre of drama that places emphasis on psychological elements. It often overlaps with other genres such as crime, fantasy, black comedy, and science fiction, and it is closely related with the psychologi ...
film written and directed by
Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke (; born 23 March 1942) is an Austrian film director and screenwriter. His work often examines social issues and depicts the feelings of estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society. Haneke has made films in French, G ...
, based on the 1983
novel of the same name by
Elfriede Jelinek
Elfriede Jelinek (; born 20 October 1946) is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She is one of the most decorated authors writing in German today and was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature for her "musical flow of voices and counter-voi ...
. It tells the story of an unmarried piano teacher (
Isabelle Huppert
Isabelle Anne Madeleine Huppert (; born 16 March 1953) is a French actress. Described as "one of the best actresses in the world", she is known for her portrayals of cold and disdainful characters devoid of morality. She is the recipient of sev ...
) at a Vienna
conservatory, living with her mother (
Annie Girardot
Annie Suzanne Girardot (25 October 193128 February 2011) was a French actress. She often played strong-willed, independent, hard-working, and often lonely women, imbuing her characters with an earthiness and reality that endeared her to women und ...
) in a state of emotional and sexual disequilibrium, who enters into a sadomasochistic relationship with her student (
Benoît Magimel
Benoît Magimel (; born 11 May 1974) is a French actor. He was 14 when he appeared in his first film, and has starred in a variety of roles in French cinema. At age 16, Magimel left school to pursue acting as a career. In 2001, he won the Best Ac ...
). A co-production of Austria and France, Haneke was given the opportunity to direct after previous attempts to adapt the novel by filmmakers
Valie Export
Valie Export (often stylized as 'VALIE EXPORT'; born 17 May 1940) is an avant-garde Austrian artist. She is best known for provocative public performances and expanded cinema work. Her artistic work also includes video installations, computer an ...
and
Paulus Manker
Paulus Manker (born 25 January 1958) is an Austrian film director and actor, as well as an author and screenplay writer.
Manker is considered one of the most maverick German-speaking actors, and polarizes public opinion like scarcely no other. ...
collapsed for financial reasons.
At the
2001 Cannes Film Festival
The 54th Cannes Film Festival started on 14 May and ran until 20 May 2001. Norwegian actress and director Liv Ullmann was the Jury President. The Palme d'Or went to the Italian film ''The Son's Room'' by Nanni Moretti.
The festival opened with ...
, it won the
Grand Prix
Grand Prix ( , meaning ''Grand Prize''; plural Grands Prix), is a name sometimes used for competitions or sport events, alluding to the winner receiving a prize, trophy or honour
Grand Prix or grand prix may refer to:
Arts and entertainment ...
; the two leads, Huppert and Magimel, won
Best Actress
Best Actress is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organisations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actresses in a film, television series, television film or play. The first Best Actress awar ...
and
Best Actor
Best Actor is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organizations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actors in a film, television series, television film or play.
The term most often refers to th ...
. It went on to receive positive reviews and other awards and nominations.
Plot
Erika Kohut is a piano professor in her late 30s at a Vienna music conservatory who resides in an apartment with her domineering elderly mother. Her late father had been a longstanding resident in a psychiatric asylum. Despite Erika's aloof and assured façade, she is a woman whose
sexual repression
Sexual repression is a state in which a person is prevented from expressing their own sexuality. Sexual repression is often linked with feelings of guilt or shame being associated with sexual impulses. Defining characteristics and practices asso ...
and loneliness is manifested in her
paraphilia
Paraphilia (previously known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. It has also been defined as sexual interest in anything ot ...
, including
voyeurism
Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of watching other people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions of a private nature.
The term comes from the French ''voir'' which means "to see". A ...
,
sadomasochistic fetishes, and
self-mutilation
Self-harm is intentional behavior that is considered harmful to oneself. This is most commonly regarded as direct injury of one's own skin tissues usually without a suicidal intention. Other terms such as cutting, self-injury and self-mutilatio ...
.
At a recital hosted by the Blonskij couple, Erika meets Walter Klemmer, a young aspiring engineer who also plays piano, and who expresses admiration of her talent for classical music. The two share an appreciation for composers
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...
and
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wor ...
, and he attempts to apply to the conservatory to be her pupil. His audition impresses the other professors, but Erika, though visibly moved by his playing, votes against him; she cites his divergent interpretation of Schubert's
Andantino, and questions his motivations. Despite this, Walter is admitted as Erika's pupil. Meanwhile, another pupil, Anna Schober, struggles with anxiety while pushed by her own ambitious mother. However, when Erika witnesses Anna and Walter socializing, she slips to an empty coatroom and smashes a glass, hiding the shards inside one of Anna's coat pockets. This cuts Anna's right hand, preventing her playing at the forthcoming jubilee concert.
Walter pursues Erika into a lavatory after she secretly injured Anna. Walter passionately kisses Erika, and she responds by repeatedly humiliating and frustrating him. She proceeds to give him a
handjob
A handjob, also spelled hand job, is a sex act, performed as either foreplay or as non-penetrative sex, that involves the manual stimulation of the penis or scrotum by another person to induce an erection for sexual pleasure, sexual arousal and s ...
before performing
fellatio
Fellatio (also known as fellation, and in slang as blowjob, BJ, giving head, or sucking off) is an oral sex act involving a person stimulating the penis of another person by using the mouth, throat, or both. Oral stimulation of the scrotum may ...
on him, but abruptly stops when he does not abide by her orders to be silent and to look at her and not to touch her. She tells him she will write him a letter regarding their next meeting. Later at the conservatory, Erika feigns sympathy for Anna's mother, with Erika saying only she can substitute for Anna in the upcoming school concert at such a late stage.
Walter is increasingly insistent in his desire to initiate a sexual relationship with Erika, but Erika is only willing if he will satisfy her masochistic fantasies. She gives him the letter indicating acts she will consent to. He follows her home and reads the letter in her bedroom, but the list repulses him and he leaves. Later that night, Erika’s mother is berating her while they lay in bed together for letting Walter in her bedroom in the middle of the night, when Erika suddenly begins kissing and groping her mother. Her mother resists and tells Erika she is unwell.
Erika finds Walter at an ice rink after his
hockey
Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...
practice to apologize. She begins to subjugate herself to him in a janitorial closet. Walter says he loves her and they begin to have sex, but Erika is unable to, and vomits while performing fellatio. Later that night, Walter arrives at Erika's apartment and attacks her in the fashion described in her letter. He locks her mother away in her bedroom before proceeding to beat and rape Erika.
The next day, Erika brings a large kitchen knife to the concert where she is scheduled to substitute for Anna. When Walter arrives, he enters cheerfully, laughing with his family, and flippantly greets her. Moments before the concert is due to start, a distraught Erika calmly stabs herself in the shoulder with the kitchen knife and exits the concert hall into the street.
Cast
*
Isabelle Huppert
Isabelle Anne Madeleine Huppert (; born 16 March 1953) is a French actress. Described as "one of the best actresses in the world", she is known for her portrayals of cold and disdainful characters devoid of morality. She is the recipient of sev ...
as Erika Kohut
*
Benoît Magimel
Benoît Magimel (; born 11 May 1974) is a French actor. He was 14 when he appeared in his first film, and has starred in a variety of roles in French cinema. At age 16, Magimel left school to pursue acting as a career. In 2001, he won the Best Ac ...
as Walter Klemmer
*
Annie Girardot
Annie Suzanne Girardot (25 October 193128 February 2011) was a French actress. She often played strong-willed, independent, hard-working, and often lonely women, imbuing her characters with an earthiness and reality that endeared her to women und ...
as The Mother
*
Susanne Lothar
Susanne Lothar (15 November 1960 – 21 July 2012) was a German film, television and stage actress.
Early life and education
Susanne Lothar was born on 15 November 1960 in Hamburg, Germany. She was the daughter of actors Hanns Lothar and Ingrid ...
as Mrs. Schober
*
Udo Samel
Udo Samel (born 25 June 1953) is a German actor. He has appeared in more than 80 films and television shows since 1977. He starred in the 1994 film ''Back to Square One'', which was entered into the 44th Berlin International Film Festival.
Sele ...
as Dr. Blonskij
*Anna Sigalevitch as Anna Schober
*Cornelia Köndgen as Mme Blonskij
Production
Development
![Burberrys Trenchcoat](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Burberrys_Trenchcoat.jpg)
The film is based on the 1983 novel ''
The Piano Teacher'' by
Elfriede Jelinek
Elfriede Jelinek (; born 20 October 1946) is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She is one of the most decorated authors writing in German today and was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature for her "musical flow of voices and counter-voi ...
, who won the 2004
Nobel Prize in Literature
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, caption =
, awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature
, presenter = Swedish Academy
, holder = Annie Ernaux (2022)
, location = Stockholm, Sweden
, year = 1901
, ...
. Director
Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke (; born 23 March 1942) is an Austrian film director and screenwriter. His work often examines social issues and depicts the feelings of estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society. Haneke has made films in French, G ...
read ''The Piano Teacher'' when it was published and aspired to adapt it to transition from making
television film
A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie or TV film/movie, is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network, in contrast to theatrical films made for ...
s to cinema. However, Haneke learned Jelinek and
Valie Export
Valie Export (often stylized as 'VALIE EXPORT'; born 17 May 1940) is an avant-garde Austrian artist. She is best known for provocative public performances and expanded cinema work. Her artistic work also includes video installations, computer an ...
had already adapted a screenplay, a project aborted due to lack of investment.
Jelinek later abandoned hope for a film version before selling the rights to
Paulus Manker
Paulus Manker (born 25 January 1958) is an Austrian film director and actor, as well as an author and screenplay writer.
Manker is considered one of the most maverick German-speaking actors, and polarizes public opinion like scarcely no other. ...
, who asked Haneke to adapt the screenplay, though Haneke would not be the director. Manker did not secure a budget, so the producer asked Haneke to direct.
Haneke agreed to take over the directorial helm, though the screenplay had been written with Manker's direction in mind, only if
Isabelle Huppert
Isabelle Anne Madeleine Huppert (; born 16 March 1953) is a French actress. Described as "one of the best actresses in the world", she is known for her portrayals of cold and disdainful characters devoid of morality. She is the recipient of sev ...
was the star.
Haneke also reorganized the novel's story, and developed the characters of Anna Schober and her mother to mirror the Kohutsc mother–daughter relationship at a past stage.
In pre-production, Haneke followed Jelinek's choices in costumes, including pleated skirts and
Burberry
Burberry is a British luxury fashion house established in 1856 by Thomas Burberry headquartered in London, England. It currently designs and distributes ready to wear, including trench coats (for which it is most famous), leather accessories, ...
trench coats common in Vienna conservatories.
Casting
Haneke had previously reached out to Huppert to star in his film ''
Funny Games'' (1997), which she passed on for another professional conflict. When Haneke told her he would not direct ''The Piano Teacher'' without her, Huppert skimmed the screenplay and realized its potential.
She said she had studied piano as a child, quitting when she was 15, but began playing again for the film.
Eva Green
Eva Gaëlle Green (, ; born ) is a French actress and model. The daughter of actress Marlène Jobert, she began her career in theatre before making her film debut in Bernardo Bertolucci's '' The Dreamers'' (2003). She achieved international reco ...
has an uncredited role as one of Walter’s friends.
Filming
Filming began on 21 August 2000 and ended on 28 October 2000.
For the scene in which Erika cuts herself in the bathtub, tubes and a pump were used for the false blood, which the props artist had to conceal from the camera under Huppert.
Huppert also wore a blood bag under her clothing for the self-stabbing scene, taken from the novel.
Benoît Magimel
Benoît Magimel (; born 11 May 1974) is a French actor. He was 14 when he appeared in his first film, and has starred in a variety of roles in French cinema. At age 16, Magimel left school to pursue acting as a career. In 2001, he won the Best Ac ...
studied piano during filming to convincingly simulate his playing scenes at the end of production, while the music is playback.
Susanne Lothar
Susanne Lothar (15 November 1960 – 21 July 2012) was a German film, television and stage actress.
Early life and education
Susanne Lothar was born on 15 November 1960 in Hamburg, Germany. She was the daughter of actors Hanns Lothar and Ingrid ...
performed in German, but her lines were
dubbed over with French in co-production.
Reception
Critical reception
On
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film has an approval rating of 73% based on 89 reviews, with an average rating of 7.00/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Though it makes for rather unpleasant viewing, ''The Piano Teacher'' is a riveting and powerful psychosexual drama."
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
awarded it three and a half stars, citing Huppert's confidence, writing on hints of revenge against The Mother character and defending the ending, saying "with a film like this any conventional ending would be a cop-out".
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw (born 19 June 1962) is a British writer and film critic. He has been chief film critic at ''The Guardian'' since 1999, and is a contributing editor at ''Esquire''.
Early life and education
Bradshaw was educated at Haberdashers ...
credited Haneke for aptitude in creating "nerve-jangling disquiet" and Huppert for "the performance of her career".
David Denby
David Denby (born 1943) is an American journalist. He served as film critic for ''The New Yorker'' until December 2014.
Early life and education
Denby grew up in New York City. He received a B. A. from Columbia University in 1965, and a master' ...
praised the film as "audaciously brilliant".
In 2017, ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' critic
Justin Chang
Justin Choigee Chang (born January 3, 1983) is an American film critic and columnist for the ''Los Angeles Times''. He previously worked for ''Variety''.
Early life
Justin Chang graduated from the University of Southern California in 2004. Chan ...
recalled ''The Piano Teacher'' as Huppert's best work in a Haneke film, and "a major achievement in a disturbingly minor key".
Mick LaSalle
Mick is a masculine given name, usually a short form (hypocorism) of Michael. Because of its popularity in Ireland, it is often used in England as a derogatory term for an Irish person or a person of Irish descent. In Australia the meaning broaden ...
credited Huppert for "a rich incarnation of a woman we might see on the street and never guess that she contains fires, earthquakes and infernos", comparing it to her in the 2016 film ''
Elle
''Elle'' (stylized ''ELLE'') is a worldwide women's magazine of French origin that offers a mix of fashion and beauty content, together with culture, society and lifestyle. The title means "she" or "her" in French. ''Elle'' is considered the w ...
''.
Accolades
''The Piano Teacher'' won awards on the European circuit, most notably the
Grand Prix
Grand Prix ( , meaning ''Grand Prize''; plural Grands Prix), is a name sometimes used for competitions or sport events, alluding to the winner receiving a prize, trophy or honour
Grand Prix or grand prix may refer to:
Arts and entertainment ...
at the 2001
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
, with the two leads, Huppert and Magimel, winning
Best Actress
Best Actress is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organisations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actresses in a film, television series, television film or play. The first Best Actress awar ...
and
Best Actor
Best Actor is the name of an award which is presented by various film, television and theatre organizations, festivals, and people's awards to leading actors in a film, television series, television film or play.
The term most often refers to th ...
. The film was Austria's submission for the
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (known as Best Foreign Language Film prior to 2020) is one of the Academy Awards handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to a ...
, but it was not nominated.
See also
*
Isabelle Huppert on screen and stage
Isabelle Huppert is a French actress who has appeared in more than 120 feature films, mostly in starring roles. Regarded as one of the most respected actresses in French cinema, she has appeared in films directed by Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc God ...
*
Sadism and masochism in fiction
The role of sadism and masochism in fiction has attracted serious scholarly attention. Anthony Storr has commented that the volume of sadomasochist pornography shows that sadomasochistic interest is widespread in Western society; John Kucich has n ...
*
*
References
External links
*
*
*
*
*
''The Piano Teacher: Bad Romances'' an essay by Moira Weigel at the
Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Piano Teacher, The
2001 films
2001 drama films
2001 independent films
2001 multilingual films
2000s erotic drama films
2000s French-language films
2000s German-language films
2000s psychological drama films
Arte France Cinéma films
Austrian drama films
Austrian independent films
Austrian multilingual films
BDSM in films
Cannes Grand Prix winners
Films about classical music and musicians
Films about pianos and pianists
Films about rape
Films about scandalous teacher–student relationships
Films about self-harm
Films about sexual repression
Films based on Austrian novels
Films directed by Michael Haneke
Films set in Vienna
Films shot in Vienna
French erotic drama films
French independent films
French psychological drama films
French multilingual films
German erotic drama films
German independent films
German multilingual films
German psychological drama films
Films about mother–daughter relationships
2000s French films
2000s German films