| 100 |
Portland Oregonian
Kim Morgan
Daring work of genius.
|
| 100 |
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Seems less like a fictional story than a tour through Freud's forgotten files.
|
| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Powerful and outrageous.
|
| 90 |
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.
|
| 90 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
A viscerally punishing study of repression and masochism, carried out with the utmost discretion and chilling reserve.
|
| 90 |
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.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
A disconcertingly assured tango between tenderness and brutality.
|
| 90 |
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.
|
| 88 |
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.
|
| 88 |
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.
|
| 88 |
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.
|
| 88 |
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
Haneke has made a masterly, disturbing movie.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
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.
|
| 80 |
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
Has the feel of a clinical case study elevated into a subject of aesthetic and philosophical discourse.
|
| 80 |
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
Haneke is an exploitation filmmaker of the highest gifts. His movies are not to be entered into lightly.
|
| 80 |
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]
|
| 78 |
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.”
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Its grimness is explicit, so approach it with caution.
|
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
The audience for this grimly disquieting film is, or ought to be, self-selecting.
|
| 70 |
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.
|
| 63 |
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
Thanks to a superb performance by Isabelle Huppert, it's compulsively, gruesomely watchable.
|
| 63 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
A squirmingly strange and brutal study of sexual power, masochism and mother-daughter madness.
|
| 60 |
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.
|
| 50 |
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.
|
| 40 |
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.
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