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The Piano Player
Metascore
79 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 26 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 23 out of 26
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 26
  3. Negative: 0 out of 26
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  1. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    100
    Powerful and outrageous.
  2. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Kim Morgan
    100
    Daring work of genius.
  3. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    100
    Seems less like a fictional story than a tour through Freud's forgotten files.
  4. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Jeff Stark
    90
    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.
  5. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    90
    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.
    All this critic's reviews
  6. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    90
    A viscerally punishing study of repression and masochism, carried out with the utmost discretion and chilling reserve.
  7. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Thomas
    90
    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.
  8. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    90
    A disconcertingly assured tango between tenderness and brutality.
  9. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    88
    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.
  10. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    88
    You will not forget The Piano Teacher. Nor will you forget Isabelle Huppert, a brave, brilliant actress who here plays her masterpiece.
  11. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Marta Barber
    88
    The result is a gripping psychological thriller that, while lacking the power of "Funny Games," is still the work of a master.
  12. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jami Bernard
    88
    Haneke has made a masterly, disturbing movie.
    All this critic's reviews
  13. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    80
    Haneke is an exploitation filmmaker of the highest gifts. His movies are not to be entered into lightly.
  14. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    80
    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.
  15. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    80
    Has the feel of a clinical case study elevated into a subject of aesthetic and philosophical discourse.
  16. New Times (L.A.)
    Reviewed by: Jean Oppenheimer
    80
    Huppert has never looked more beautiful. Despite her severe expression and lack of makeup, her face communicates enormous character. She proves absolutely spellbinding.
    All this critic's reviews
  17. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: David Denby
    80
    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]
    All this critic's reviews
  18. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    78
    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.”
  19. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    75
    Its grimness is explicit, so approach it with caution.
  20. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    75
    The audience for this grimly disquieting film is, or ought to be, self-selecting.
  21. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    70
    The Piano Teacher's study in lurid sexual pathology occasions a tour de force by Isabelle Huppert as the title character.
  22. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Foreman
    63
    Thanks to a superb performance by Isabelle Huppert, it's compulsively, gruesomely watchable.
  23. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    63
    A squirmingly strange and brutal study of sexual power, masochism and mother-daughter madness.
  24. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    60
    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.
  25. Variety
    Reviewed by: David Rooney
    50
    Whatever valid points are being explored are hopelessly clouded by the film's unwavering earnestness as it descends into silliness and excess.
  26. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    40
    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.
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User Reviews

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User Score
7.7 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 36 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 21
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 21
  3. Negative: 5 out of 21
  1. 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.… Full Review »
  2. 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.… Full Review »
  3. JasonE.
    8
    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.… Full Review »
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