The Piano Teacher (Unrated Edition)
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Movie Reviews of The Piano Teacher (Unrated Edition)
Movie Review: Shockingly beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
The first time I ever saw this movie I sat with my jaw dropped throughout the entire movie. Then I continued to watch the same chanel on t.v. for weeks just trying to figure out the name of the movie.
This is a portrayal of love in it's rawest most human form. It is completely blind. Even to itself. The storyline is absolutely breath taking and immediatly grabbed at my chest. It is without a doubt the sickest love story I have ever seen. It is amazing to see an emotion portayed so realisticly. I will never tire of this movie.
Movie Review: The loss of the emotional and affective center!
Summary: 4 Stars
A piano teacher superbly performed by Isabelle Huppert (one of my top favorite actress in the world), exhibits the ancient myth of Eros and Psiquis, and emerges with powerful force and dark poetry in this frustrated human being who, hidden on her art helmet, seems to watch how her best lifetime passed without any expectative. The cotidianity establishes in her life an unbearable repetition of a long catalogue of common places. Indeed, the obvious conclusion you perceive after she punishes that promising and talented pupil through the most miserable envy feeling and impotence. In her soul depths she knows her pupil will overpass her in a future not so distant.
But suddenly the passion appears and with it the Pandora Box will open with her cumulative sum of expected affection, sexual repressions and the wished love that came behind the masque of the oblivion.
She will play hard this role of victim and victimary. In her role of teacher the last profile is well known but she knows the time is brief and somehow as the famous Proust novel she intends to search desperately the missed time.
To be honest the camera is not to the same level than the performers. Huppert is overwhelming but the camera eye doesn't maintain the same level of required fierceness and mistakenly you can feel it. If you intend to change visual agression with the deepest insights of that troubled soul avid of love and consideration, we have big problem.
Think in Nagisa Oshima with the Empire Senses and you will realize that important device. The way you use your filmic language is even much more important perhaps tahn the same script if you want to accent certain issues to achieve your purpose. Otherwise you will obtain a serious artistic deficit when you analyze the final result.
Movie Review: Disturbing, surprising, and very powerful.
Summary: 5 Stars
Many of the reviews have provided very good plot summaries, descriptions of major scenes, etc., but none have really given a good description of how this film makes you, as the viewer, feel. This is a pity, because here we have a powerful film that leaves you unsettled and puzzled. The main characters are far enough askew that you cannot identify with them, but real enough that you empathize. Moreover, while it is easy to say that the sado-masochistic themes are what makes this film troubling, there are really many layers where we are stymied in our hope for resolution and explanation.
Clues are strewn throughout the story, bits of history that we latch on to in our quest to understand why this piano teacher is so cruel, why she withstands the abuses of her mother, why she mutilates herself. The easy answers are unsatisfactory. She abuses her mother as much as she is abused. Her father went crazy, but was there something unspeakable in his past? She is a perfectionist, but seems jealous of others. Inevitably we attempt to use these clues to "solve" the puzzle, but our piano teacher always seems one step ahead in eluding us. Further, this leave-a-clue/elude-resolution pattern continues through the final scene of the film, thus we cannot attempt to understand or explain it until after we have seen it in its entirety. Watch this film with someone and you will spend hours discussing it in an attempt to understand it. Usually, when my wife and I watch a film, we discuss how it fits in with other films, its potential importance and influence(s). With this film our discussion never made it outside the film - we were trying to understand the characters.
This film changes the way you look at other people. When we are introduced to the main characters,Erika Kohut and her student Walter Klemmer, we see characteristics that remind of of others we know. Yet as we learn more about them, we are disturbed. We don't like what we find when we cross from the public to the personal - and by extension we begin to wonder about those around us, even how we appear to others. That we never resolve the characters, that we never figure out how to categorize and place them, exacerbates this disruption of our view of humanity. The real and the surreal are so tightly woven in the characters that we lose confidence in our ability to discern. We become a bit like Walter Klemmer who is clearly flailing in his attempt to regroup after his teacher reveals a bit of her "real" self.
While the film is disturbing, the shock comes from the characters, particularly Erika. Her actions defy our sensibility, and while there are serious sexual overtones - if not plain sexual actions - in the film, everything is so much imbued with a sense of pain and emotional sickness that we are shocked rather than titillated. Visually the film is beautiful, if a bit dark. Sense of space, mood, and feeling change with ease. This is a film that looks natural, rich, and vibrant. The disjuncture between the public scenes and the private interior of the characters (again, primarily Erika, though Walter throws us a few curves) is part of what makes this film work so well.
Again, I highly recommend this film, but with the stipulation that it is not for the weak of heart.
Movie Review: Are you kidding me?
Summary: 1 Stars
I watched this film a few years ago, and like The Secretary, it was a truly bad film. Sick and extremely disturbing, not to mention boring. I must've fell asleep 10 times while watching this film. I could've made a better movie. Not recommended.
Movie Review: Breathtaking and Intense
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is unusual from the beginning. I was so transfixed when I first saw it in the theater that I went back three more times. This is unlike you will see from an American studio. The French, it seems, display more bravado when dealing with controversial topics. The story centers around Erika (played magnificently by Isabelle Huppert), a piano teacher still being treated like a 12-year-old by her mother(Annie Girardot). Erika seems to derive all of her satisfaction in life by means of a piano. When a younger man shows interest in her, she at first, rebuffs him. You get the impression that Erika has never been involved in a relationship with a man before. The problem is, the man,Walter,(also magnificently played by Benoit Magimel), doesn't know what he's getting himself into. The object of his desire performs masochistic experiments on herself, even to the point of drawing blood. (This scene is omitted in the R Rated version.) After Erika has her student attacked she and Walter proceed to have perhaps, the most unusual sex scene you are ever to see on film. The story unravels with her revelation that she wants him to beat her. The catch, ironically enough,is that she doesn't want to be beaten, she wants to be loved. Everything comes to a head at the when Walter beats and rapes her. The apparent moral of this is: don't say anything you don't absolutely mean. And perhaps, be careful what you wish for. Walter, himself, also says something he ultimately doesn't mean. I found the ending unexpected when I first saw it, and I don't want to give it away. You will have to see it for yourself. Isabelle Huppert's performance in this picture is haunting. You sense her character's cold exterior, while simultaneously, sensing her inner vulnerability. The classical music of Franz Schubert is expertly placed in this movie. And it's effect is obvious when you see it. Both co-stars spent a year perfecting the music. There is nothing false about their performances. There are a number of scenes in this movie that can turn your stomach. If you are looking for lighthearted fare you might want to look elsewhere. But if you are intrigued by something complex and daring, a movie that holds no punches, a movie that will have you talking about it after it is over, or if you appreciate first-rate acting, then I highly recommend this movie. It ranks at the very top of my list of favorites, and has made me into a lifelong devotee of Isabelle Huppert. The DVD includes a 20 minute interview with the star.