The Piano Teacher (film)

2001 film by Michael Haneke

The Piano Teacher is a 2001 erotic psychological drama film written and directed by Michael Haneke, based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Elfriede Jelinek. It tells the story of an unmarried piano teacher (Isabelle Huppert) at a Vienna conservatory, living with her mother (Annie Girardot) in a state of emotional and sexual disequilibrium, who enters into a sadomasochistic relationship with her student (Benoît Magimel). A co production between France and Austria, Haneke was given the opportunity to direct after previous attempts to adapt the novel by filmmakers Valie Export and Paulus Manker collapsed for financial reasons. At the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, it won the Grand Prix, and the two leads, Huppert and Magimel, won Best Actress and Best Actor. It went on to receive positive reviews and other awards and nominations.

Erika Kohut is a piano professor in her late thirties at the Vienna Music Conservatory who resides in an apartment with her domineering elderly mother. Her late father had been a longstanding resident in a psychiatric asylum. Despite Erika's aloof and assured façade, she is a woman whose sexual repression and loneliness are manifested in her paraphilia, including voyeurism, sadomasochistic fetishes, and self mutilation. At a recital hosted by the Blonskij couple, Erika meets Walter Klemmer, a young aspiring engineer who also plays piano, and who expresses admiration of her talent for classical music. The two share an appreciation for composers Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert, and he attempts to apply to the conservatory to be her pupil. His audition impresses the other professors, but Erika, though visibly moved by his playing, votes against him; she cites his divergent interpretation of Schubert's Andantino, and questions his motivations. Despite this, Walter is admitted as Erika's pupil. Meanwhile, another pupil, Anna Schober, struggles with anxiety while pushed by her own ambitious mother. When Erika witnesses Anna and Walter socialising, she slips to an empty coatroom and smashes a glass, hiding the shards inside one of Anna's coat pockets. This cuts Anna's right hand, preventing her from playing at the forthcoming jubilee concert. Walter pursues Erika into a lavatory after she secretly injured Anna. Walter passionately kisses Erika, and she responds by repeatedly humiliating and frustrating him. She proceeds to give him a handjob before performing fellatio on him, but abruptly stops when he does not abide by her orders to be silent and to look at her and not to touch her. She tells him she will write him a letter regarding their next meeting. Later at the conservatory, Erika feigns sympathy for Anna's mother, with Erika saying only she can substitute for Anna in the upcoming school concert at such short notice. Walter is increasingly insistent in his desire to initiate a sexual relationship with Erika, but Erika is only willing if he will satisfy her masochistic fantasies. She gives him the letter indicating acts she will consent to. He follows her home and reads the letter in her bedroom, but the list repulses him and he leaves. Later that night, Erika's mother is berating her while they lay in bed together for letting Walter in her bedroom in the middle of the night, when Erika suddenly begins kissing and groping her mother. Her mother resists and tells Erika she is unwell. Erika finds Walter at an ice rink after his hockey practice to apologise. She begins to subjugate herself to him in a janitorial closet. Walter says he loves her and they begin to have sex, but Erika is unable to, and vomits while performing fellatio. Later that night, Walter arrives at Erika's apartment and attacks her in the fashion described in her letter. He locks her mother away in her bedroom before proceeding to beat and rape Erika, despite her pleas for him to stop. The next day, Erika brings a large kitchen knife to the concert where she is scheduled to substitute for Anna. When Walter arrives, he enters cheerfully, laughing with his family, and flippantly greets her. Moments before the concert is due to start, a distraught Erika calmly stabs herself in the shoulder with the kitchen knife and exits the concert hall into the street.

The film is based on the 1983 novel The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, who won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature. Director Michael Haneke read The Piano Teacher when it was published and aspired to adapt it to transition from making television films to cinema. However, Haneke learned Jelinek and Valie Export had already adapted a screenplay, a project aborted due to lack of investment. Jelinek later abandoned hope for a film version before selling the rights to Paulus Manker, who asked Haneke to adapt the screenplay, though Haneke would not be the director. Manker did not secure a budget, so the producer asked Haneke to direct. She said she had studied piano as a child, quitting when she was 15, but began playing again for the film. Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun Times awarded it three and a half stars, citing Huppert's confidence, writing on hints of revenge against The Mother character and defending the ending, saying "with a film like this any conventional ending would be a cop out". Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian credited Haneke for aptitude in creating "nerve jangling disquiet" and Huppert for "the performance of her career". David Denby of The New Yorker praised the film as "audaciously brilliant". In 2017, Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang recalled The Piano Teacher as Huppert's best work in a Haneke film, and "a major achievement in a disturbingly minor key". Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle described Huppert as "a rich incarnation of a woman we might see on the street and never guess that she contains fires, earthquakes and infernos", comparing it to her performance in the 2016 film Elle.