1. AleH.

   10

   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.… Expand

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2. jeremyp

   4

   This is a movie about madness. An uptight, arrogant, caustic piano teacher turns out to be Mrs. Goodbar. We're led to believe she got this way from being under the thumb of a controlling mother, but like Black Swan the madness is too extreme to have come from suppression of the id. At first her madness is fascinating to watch, because her fetish seems to be sexual control....of men., but unfortunately the character then disintegrates into a masochist who allows her student to get the upper hand, and let out plenty of his suppressed anger at women. The last half hour is gruesome to watch and we learn nothing about her or the point of the movie. The ending is abrupt and maddeningly teasing. Hubbert is one of my favorite French actresses and I'm sure she took this on for the challenge but once again "madness" on the screen is used to encourage excess rather than insight.… Expand

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3. LeeT.

   2

   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.… Expand

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