The Piano Teacher (2001)
Directed by Michael Haneke
Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.
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4 films that influenced The Piano Teacher
What critics say influenced The Piano Teacher
In the tradition of "Repulsion," "Belle de Jour" and "Looking for Mr. Goodbar," "The Piano Teacher" creates a hermetic, frightening world, and Huppert delivers a courageous performance as the woman around whom it ultimately falls apart.
Haneke's films challenge not only media violence, but also unsuccessful satires of media violence, like Oliver Stone's indulgent, bloodily hedonistic Natural Born Killers.
Haneke's adaptation of a novel by Elfriede Jelinek may be shot, edited and performed rather more conventionally than most of his work, but in many ways it's no less confrontational or transgressive than, say, The Seventh Continent or Funny Games.
The work of director Michael Haneke ("Funny Games," "Code Unknown"), who also adapted the screenplay from Elfriede Jelinek's novel, is an acquired taste.
The last major film Michael Haneke directed was "Funny Games," a study of claustrophobia and sadism that was thoroughly unlikable but proved a fitting prelude to "The Piano Teacher."
In the late '80s and '90s, he made a series of austere and violent movies that explored such subjects as self-annihilation (The Seventh Continent), alienation (Benny's Video) and sadism (Funny Games).
Austrian director Michael Haneke , best known in the UK for "Funny Games" and " Code Unknown ", is in traditional hard-hitting mode for "The Piano Teacher" (La Pianiste), a psychological drama based on a novel by Elfriede Jelinek.
As in The Piano Teacher, Haneke’s employment of violence is sudden; here, the technique is exercised repeatedly, resulting in a horror effort that should be appreciated for its sheer, brutal audacity.