The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste)

by Igor Stanojevic

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Benoit Magimel, Annie Girardot, Susanne Lothar, Anna Sigalevitch, Udo Samel
Director: Michael Haneke
Screenplay: Michael Haneke (Based on the book by Elfriede Jelinek)

The clips and trailers I`ve seen for “La Pianiste” made it feel like it was going to be a drawn out, boring drama. Instead, it is a finely crafted psychological thriller, with a magnificent performance by Isabelle Huppert, in a role that more than once made me think of Anthony Perkins in the role of Norman Bates.

Ms. Kohut is an excellent piano player and a piano teacher. She lives with her mother, and shows no sign of any social life whatsoever. She hates her mother and yet loves her. She hates her students, always telling them they`re not good enough and once even directly causing the end of their career. She is a sexually frustrated woman.

A long time ago, she locked up her libido in jar, in order to become a brilliant pianist. Since, her libido has grown into a huge, devious monster constantly haunting her. The world, however, never sees that part of her, instead only seeing her cold, intellectual outside. her deepest desires are to be dominated by a man. She is a tragic victim of herself.

When a young man, attracted to her by her craft of music, start making advances, maybe even for the first time in her life, she forced to make some sort of a move, and she has absolutely no idea what sort of thing that move has to be. She begins to jealously treasure her lover-to-be, and yet is reluctant to engage in a relationship with him.

And now I`m making it sound like the sort of film I though it would be before seeing it. This movie has a couple of extremely disturbing and shocking scenes, in which you truly learn how demented and insane this woman is. And then we come to Isabelle Huppert again.

For a long time, Huppert has been an excellent, reliable actress. I don`t remember her ever not performing well, but I also don`t remember her performing excellent. This is by far her best performance I`ve ever seen, and have to absolutely concur with Cannes Festival Jury (which gave her Best Actress award). She carries the whole movie, and though the movie would`ve probably been good with another actress, it would undoubtedly be much, much worse.

“La Pianiste” is a remarkable example of a finely crafted psychology of a character. As outrageous as she is, we never once doubt her motivations or actions. A character bound to stay with me for quite some time.

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