Directed by Michael Haneke • 2001 • France
Starring Isabelle Huppert, Benoît Magimel
In this riveting study of the dynamics of control, Academy Award–winning director Michael Haneke takes on Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek’s controversial 1983 novel about perverse female sexuality and the world of classical music. Haneke finds his match in Isabelle Huppert, who delivers an icy but quietly seething performance as Erika, a piano professor at a Viennese conservatory who lives with her mother in a claustrophobically codependent relationship. Severely repressed, she satisfies her masochistic urges only voyeuristically until she meets Walter (Benoît Magimel), a student whose desire for Erika leads to a destructive infatuation that upsets the careful equilibrium of her life. A critical breakthrough for Haneke, THE PIANO TEACHER—which won the Grand Prix as well as dual acting awards for its stars at Cannes—is a formalist masterwork that remains a shocking sensation.
Directed by Stephen Daldry • 2002 • United States
Starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep
The powerhouse trio of Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman deliver masterful performances in Stephen Daldry’s exquisitely multilayered adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Pr...
Directed by Matteo Garrone • 2008 • Italy
Starring Toni Servillo, Salvatore Abruzzese, Gianfelice Imparato
Matteo Garrone’s GOMORRAH is a stark, shocking vision of contemporary gangsterdom, and one of cinema’s most authentic depictions of organized crime. In this tour de force adaptation of unde...
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 2011 • Belgium, France
Starring Stanislas Merhar, Marc Barbé, Aurora Marion
Somewhere in Southeast Asia, in a remote village on a wide and turbulent river, a European man (Stanislas Merhar) clings to his pipe dreams of discovering a fortune out of love for his mixed...
