The Piano Teacher

Erika Khout (Isabelle Huppert) is a teacher at the Vienna Conservatory. Now in her late thirties and living a hermetic, love-hate existence with a tyrannical mother (Annie Giradot), Erika’s sex life has been reduced to voyeurism and masochistic diversions. Educated to be an artist in an atmosphere of the strictest discipline, she can only derive pleasure from suffering and punishment, which she seeks to inflict upon Walter (Benoît Magimel), a student with whom she starts a torrid affair. Haneke’s targets are not only the role pornography plays in modern life but also the terrible repression that can be engendered by a misplaced devotion to unattainable values as represented by classical music. Despite the visceral impact of many of its scenes, the film is ultimately as compassionate as it is intelligent and courageous.