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Piano Teacher, The
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 26 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 30 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Foreign
Written by:
Michael Haneke
Elfriede Jelinek (novel)
Directed by: Michael Haneke
Release Date:
Theatrical: March 29, 2002
DVD: November 5, 2002
Running Time: 130 minutes, Color
Origin: Austria / France
Language(s): French (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoît Magimel, Susanne Lothar, Udo Samel, Anna Sigalevitch, Cornelia Köndgen, and Thomas Weinhappel
Erika (Huppert) is a piano teacher at a prestigious music school in Vienna. In her early forties and single, she lives with her overprotective and controlling mother (Girardot). Lonely and alienated, Erika finds solace by visiting sex shops and experimenting with masochism. (Kino International)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance Cache (Hidden) Code Unknown Funny Games Funny Games The Time of the Wolf
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Seems less like a fictional story than a tour through Freud's forgotten files.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Manohla Dargis
At once an emotional thriller and a domestic horror movie -- a woman's picture with a vengeance, in which the bloodletting is kept to a minimum, and ends up all the more powerful and profound for it.
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
A viscerally punishing study of repression and masochism, carried out with the utmost discretion and chilling reserve.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Jeff Stark
When you see The Piano Teacher in a movie theater you get a chance to go back in time, back to the days when French movies were titillating, provocative and kind of smart.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
A disconcertingly assured tango between tenderness and brutality.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
The Piano Teacher will surely be too strong for some audiences and is best left to those who like films that take big risks and get away with them.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
There is an old saying: Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it. The Piano Teacher has a more ominous lesson: Be especially careful with someone who has asked for you.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
You will not forget The Piano Teacher. Nor will you forget Isabelle Huppert, a brave, brilliant actress who here plays her masterpiece.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Marta Barber
The result is a gripping psychological thriller that, while lacking the power of "Funny Games," is still the work of a master.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Haneke has made a masterly, disturbing movie.
New Times (L.A.) Jean Oppenheimer
Huppert has never looked more beautiful. Despite her severe expression and lack of makeup, her face communicates enormous character. She proves absolutely spellbinding.
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Watching Haneke's film is, aptly enough, a challenge and a punishment. But watching Huppert, a great actress tearing into a landmark role, is riveting.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
Has the feel of a clinical case study elevated into a subject of aesthetic and philosophical discourse.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Haneke is an exploitation filmmaker of the highest gifts. His movies are not to be entered into lightly.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
A seriously scandalous work, beautifully made, and it deserves a sizable audience that might argue over it, appreciate it -- even hate it. [1 April 2002, p. 98]
Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Although little is ultimately “solved” or demystified in The Piano Teacher, the movie allows a chaperoned peek into the mind of one of civilization's “discontents.”
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Its grimness is explicit, so approach it with caution.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The audience for this grimly disquieting film is, or ought to be, self-selecting.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
The Piano Teacher's study in lurid sexual pathology occasions a tour de force by Isabelle Huppert as the title character.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
Thanks to a superb performance by Isabelle Huppert, it's compulsively, gruesomely watchable.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
A squirmingly strange and brutal study of sexual power, masochism and mother-daughter madness.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
If you like being shaken up and don't care too much why or how, this is probably for you; Huppert gives her all to the part, and you won't be bored.
Read Full Review >Variety David Rooney
Whatever valid points are being explored are hopelessly clouded by the film's unwavering earnestness as it descends into silliness and excess.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
This is a psychological study that rejects psychology, an erotic drama of surpassing coldness, and a story of amour fou in which the madness is calculated and the love frozen.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 30 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Lee T. gave it a2:
Things about this movie that don't make sense: People in Vienna don't speak French. They speak German. Vienna is in Austria. Get it? What professor has sex in the bathroom of her school with the door open? Is that realistic? Maybe on Jupiter, where professors don't care if they get ridiculed and then fired. In Vienna, they care, even when they go around speaking French. Why, when Erika finally gets what she's been asking for during the whole movie, does she suddenly become frigid? Why does she ask her boyfriend to hit her in the face, and when he does, the first thing she says is, Not my face? I've got to give the director this much - if you've gotten the viewer to sit through a movie for over two hours and your protagonist finally gets what she's been asking for and then doesn't like it, what could possibly be a more dramatic and illogical climax than to have her then kill herself? Or maybe she kills herself because she finally realizes what a dreadful script she accepted. Now that would make sense.
Jason E. gave it an8:
Confrontations with ones emotional hollowness and inability to engage in physical love doesn't get more harrowing than in Haneke's typically masochistic study of incomplete individuality and the facades we publicly offer to assure ourselves of a full life. Despite existing in a world of gorgeous, soulful music that stirs the heart, an instructor finds herself incapable of communicating with the smallest amount of grace and decency in order to assist her frazzled students. Should it be a surprise then, that something more than failure is met when a chance at a meaningful physical connection is offered. Despite veering off in a foolish and stagy extremes during its last few minutes, this is an believably inexorable experience. Huppert is perfectly suited, with her severe brow and her uncanny introverted instincts, like Nathalie Baye, to play women who succeed in wringing out every last potentiality of pain in her characters. However, I did disapprove of Magimel's casting as he leering eyes lasciviously undress 'Erika' from the onstart. Klemmer's character should be aware of his uncommon talents but more oblivious to his sexiness and charms. Then, his longing for 'Erika' and its eventual unraveling would have been doubly heart-renderingly tragic - for him as well as for her.
Ale H. gave it a10:
This movie can be called a masterpiece! Regardless of the plot, the director knew how to make the audience tremble of emotion. The picture and the music are subtly arranged to accent the deep constrast in the personality of the pianist (the movie's original name). I particularly enjoyed the take when the protagonist's other side is first revealed: after rehearsing Schubert, the music stays in the background while the piano teacher walks through a mall and ends in a porno boutique.
Marilyn M. gave it a10:
Haunting! Perfect!
Anna R. gave it a10:
A superb movie, in which I really didn't know how to feel for the protagonist- sorry? like? dislike? The cold direction and cinematography, and the excellence of the actors made this seem so real. Throughout the film, you want to feel a sense of satisfaction, but we are never given it. It's a cold, shocking and brilliant film.
Andrew M. gave it a 9:
This is an excellent film with some quite overwhelming scenes, especially when the power of the acting is at the fore. Huppert and Magimel are simply outstanding and both fully deserved the awards at Cannes. Huppert perfectly displayed the countenance of a troubled middle-aged woman battling her demons. Magimel was equally brilliant, initially portaying the picture of the hunting dog, then the fox on the run, and then finally the caged lion. Girardot too, who played the mother, was quite exceptional, not overemphasising her character but imbuing enough oomph to make her demanding to watch. I thought the direction and (to a lesser degree) the cinematography were fascinating in this film - with the aid of the acting, it was an absorbing, albeit uncomfortable, film to watch. This is not a film I will queue up for repeated viewings of...but for a one-off movie experience, this is gripping stuff!
Yoon C. gave it an 8:
A painful story of a emotionally repressed and crippled woman who hides behind the rigid(and frigid?)discipline of classical music to control others and to confine her desires. The movie uses the culture of classical music as a metaphor on how tradition and art are utilized as tools of power, domination, seduction, and rebellion. It could cynically be dismissed as a silly movie about a horny woman who needs some action, and perhaps from a laidback American perspective, that view has validity. But, people--especially of older histories--are conditioned by culture and traditions; their sense of self is determined by their perception by others, and the movie asks how does a woman cope when her social status acts as both the barrier to what one really needs. It's a story of a woman who wants to be dominated but performs the role of domination; or the story of a woman who can only think in terms of domination or submission, thereby attracting those with similar tendencies. Her difficulty and hostility aren't only barriers but attractions as well, and the contradictions of the ensuing relationship lead to a harrowing non-conclusion.
