Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

SnoopyStyle Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) has a volatile home life with her combative mother leading to violence at times. Erika has disturbing sexual tendencies such as porn shop visits, self-mutilations, and voyeurism. She's a piano professor at a conservatory. She's hard on her students especially the fragile Anna Schober. Walter Klemmer is a new student at the conservatory despite her objection. He's taken with her and she eventually lets him into her sexually disturbed world.Isabelle Huppert has such great screen presence. She's great at playing damaged, vulnerable, and cold. It's not the most fun watch. There are a couple of really weird scenes. Her relationship with her mother is outrageous. This is an interesting character study of a troubled woman.

sharky_55 One night as Erika Kohut returns home, she is immediately confronted with a barrage of questions and accusations and insults by her mother. It turns physical as the pair exchange slaps, and then her mother tearfully relents and guilt trips her into a heartfelt embrace and make-up. We sense that this is a frequent cycle of events in this troubled household. And then slowly, as Haneke always does, the uptight, business-first piano teacher is revealed to be some sort of sexually repressed deviant that seeks solace and expression in BDSM and other sexual kinks. One of the things that this film excels in is visually portraying that carnal lust from our two main characters. One is a middle-aged woman whom is suggested to never have had a normal relationship, while the other is an excited 17 year old boy. In an American film, the lovers would burst through the doors, struggling but somehow never actually removing any of their clothes, and then we would cut to a post-coital scene with the sheets appropriately covering their top halves. Here, they are entwined with such quiet desperation (see the pose on the poster) even as their characters are so at odds with each other. She forbids him from touching her and denies him orgasms, no doubt passing on such a strict manner of obedience from her mother. And he jogs on the spot vigorously and celebrates on his apparent sexual conquest to be, like a 17 year old would. The tragedy then, is in the misunderstanding of the psychological damage that has been done to Erika and its consequences. Walter is uniquely positioned at an age of breaching adulthood and suffice to say that his smile and greeting near the end of the film is supposed to be a pleasant one, but becomes chilling because he has completely misinterpreted the situation. This is a deeply pessimistic film, and I think for once Haneke has missed his mark in attempting to forge this character of Erika. He is forced to rely on these subtly shocking scenes as he often does; the peeing while voyeuristically spying on a couple in a drive-in theatre, the self-mutilation, and the sudden pouncing and sexual longing for the mother that reeks of simplicity and misunderstanding. She is reduced to a delicate sadomasochistic stereotype that so easily wilts over so that we are compliant in being sympathetic with her. It is a pity because Isabelle Huppert's performance deserves much praise. There is a cold, calculated manner in the way she carries herself that puts on such a strong exterior barrier in her persona that makes it so much more effective when we peer into her deeper fantasies. After she is caught in the drive-in, she doesn't scamper away like some red-handed thief, but briskly makes her way out of the area with her head held high like some sort of businesswoman with a busy schedule. The slight embarrassment on Huppert's face sells it. Later, when she catches one of her students looking at porn magazines in a shop (but really it is he catching her), there is that slight embarrassment again, but she acts haughtily and dismissively and quickly pretends to be occupied. She presents herself as the harsh, unsmiling, career-orientated woman while committing such a petty and hurtful act in the background. Haneke shoots these characters in harsh light and washed out palettes even as they are surrounded by beautiful music. His edits link together the steely, unblinking gazes of teacher and student and vice versa, blocking out all other directions. In one instance, he frames Erika at a piano recital, completely surrounded by empty chairs and separated from the others of the group. A conversation with the weeping mother of the wounded child conveys a strong sense of irony when she questions who would be so evil to do such a thing. But this film is not about the lurking of evil below the surface. It is about misunderstanding, and how it gives birth to tragedy.

a-dawood133 La Pianistelove is complex as far as humans go . it is a feeling they have they develop they enjoy they find peace and calmness in it . it is the ultimate feeling of emotional encounters . in every moment you were moved at . it will contribute in your love feeling and that what this movie is all about ! . it is a love story involves a pianist and his teacher . her love -the teacher- is expressed in a bizarre way which is the point referred to at the top she enjoyed bing treated in a peculiar way and i would argue that since love is the ultimate feeling and it would be effected by the emotional moments of one's life that she was treated with aggression rather than compassion . because of the oddness of the story the movie takes you to a different level of romance . would you do hurtful things for the ones you love even if they bleed ? or you would protect them from themselves because you love them ? it is a question of what comes first ? you or them and what would it mean to come first .good movie.

James Hitchcock Although  "The Piano Teacher" is a French film with dialogue in French, it is set in Austria, based on a novel by an Austrian writer (Elfriede Jelinek) and directed by an Austrian-born director, Michael Haneke. The original French title of this film was "La Pianiste" which literally means "The Pianist", as does Jelinek's title "Die Klavierspielerin". This title was not, however, used in English, doubtless to avoid confusion with Roman Polanski's film of that name. The main character is Erika Kohut, a professional pianist and a piano professor at a Vienna music conservatory. Outwardly Erika is a reserved, repressed and puritanical individual. Although she is already in her forties she still lives at home with her elderly, domineering mother; the two even share the same bed. We never see Erika's g father but learn that he is incarcerated in a psychiatric asylum. There is, however, a hidden side to her personality, first revealed when we see her acting as a Peeping Tom, spying on courting couples at a drive-in cinema. More of this hidden side is revealed when Erika begins a sexual relationship with a good-looking young pupil, Walter Klemmer. Although Walter is physically attracted to his teacher, he is repelled by her sadomasochistic tendencies, which leads to a curious love-hate relationship growing up between them. Erika's speciality as a pianist is Schumann and Schubert; Schubert's music plays a particularly important part in the film. This struck me as very appropriate, as his music has always struck me, like that of Mozart, as being full of emotion but hiding it behind a veil of reserve, in contrast to the much more openly emotional and Romantic music of slightly later composers such as Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner. I felt, however, that the film rather pandered to the Hollywood myth of Schubert as a shy, ugly little man who poured into his music all the emotions he could not express in life; in reality he seems to have been a successful womaniser, even though he was far from handsome. Isabelle Huppert is often compelling, and Annie Girardot is also good as Erika's witch-like mother, but this is not a film I cared for. In what is supposedly a character study far too much is left unexplained, such as the incident in which Erika deliberately injures one of her female students by putting broken glass in her coat pocket. In the violent sexual encounters between Erika and Walter it is never made clear whether he is abusing her or merely pandering to her masochistic tendencies. Haneke (who acted as scriptwriter as well as director) might think that this distinction does not matter, but I felt that it was very relevant to an understanding of Erika's character. "The Piano Teacher" seems to have been intended as a dark, disturbing psychological study, but I found that it did not do much to explain Erika's behaviour except in terms of that old get-out "sexual repression"; there are doubtless many people who are sexually repressed, but most of them do not behave in the same way as Erika, who appears to be verging on the criminally insane. "The Piano Teacher" may be dark and disturbing, but it disturbs us to no good purpose and hides little of substance beneath its darkness. Having been greatly impressed by Haneke's more recent "The White Ribbon", I was very disappointed by this film. 4/10