The Piano Teacher
The Piano Teacher
•
2h 11m
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.
Up Next in The Piano Teacher
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Michael Haneke on THE PIANO TEACHER
This interview with director Michael Haneke was conducted in Vienna in May 2017.
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THE PIANO TEACHER Selected-Scene Comm...
The following commentary, recorded in 2001, features actor Isabelle Huppert discussing several scenes from THE PIANO TEACHER.
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Isabelle Huppert on THE PIANO TEACHER
This interview with actor Isabelle Huppert was conducted in Paris in June 2017.