LA PIANISTE (THE PIANO TEACHER)

France/Austria, 2001, 131 minutes, Colour.
Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoit Magimel.
Directed by Michael Haneke.

La Pianiste is a very strong and powerful film, even alarming and frightening. It is based on a celebrated novel by Elfriede Jelinek (and the mother character in the novel and film is said to be based on the author’s own mother).

The film is set in Vienna and focuses on a relationship between a mother (Annie Girardot) and her forty-year-old daughter (Isabelle Huppert). The daughter is unmarried, lives at home with her mother, continually clashing with her. She is a music teacher – strongly critical of the performance of her students. She develops a crush on a young pianist (Benoit Magimel) and pursues him for an affair. At first he is flattered, then bewildered, then alarmed. In the meantime, the film focuses on the repressed sexuality of the teacher and the outlets that she uses, including pornography and self-mutilation.

The film won the Grand Jury prize at the Cannes film festival. Isabelle Huppert and Benoit Magimel won the best actor and best actress awards.

Michael Haneke began making films in the 1970s but did not come into his own until 1992 with Benny’s Video, a film of violence, especially related to television and video films. By the late 1990s he made Funny Games, again an alarming film about a group of thugs invading an ordinary home and terrorising the family. (He directed a remake in 2007 with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth). Haneke then went on to make a number of significant films including Code Inconnu, The Time of the Wolf and Hidden (Cache).

The Pianist (*Piano Teacher?) is a significant film in terms of female sexuality, repression and the consequences.

1.The impact of the novel? The maturity of the audience needed for such a film, treatment? Based on a novel, the adaptation of the novel?

2.The Viennese settings, the ordinary homes and apartments, the contrast with the streets, the buildings, the interiors of the public buildings, their grandeur and style?

3.The title, music performance, the range of music played, the classics? The artistry of the piano?

4.The focus of the theme on the mother and daughter, the first part of the film, the initial fight, the issues, the age of the mother, the age of the daughter, their mutual dependency, their clashes? Living together, the closeness, the beds, the rooms? The lack of privacy for the daughter? Her mother’s mental state? The importance of the issue of clothes, the daughter dressing? Arguments and tears?

5.As a teacher? The daughter and her personality, her age? Her range of students, her comments, the severity of her critique? The performances of the children? The boy and the issue of the magazines, the girl and the glass?

6.Erika in herself, intelligent, arrogant, superior to her mother, her attitude towards her peers? Her recital, in the lift, first seeing Walter? The encounter with him, cold? The Schubert music? Her mother?

7.Her mother, her age, character, possessiveness? Keeping herself in the apartment? The later portrait of the mother, the issues of sexuality?

8.The introduction of Walter, age, good-looking, experience, wanting to perform, the audition, her reaction, his reaction? His talent or not?

9.Erika and her going to the shop, the cubicle, the sexual apparatus, the glass? The scenes in the bathroom, the razor blades, the blood? The sadomasochistic gear? The contrast between her outer serenity and her inner turmoil? Mental state?

10.Walter, the hockey, watching, the glass? Erika and the relationship, his response, the sexual explicitness? Her demands?

11.The hockey, Walter, vomiting?

12.The device of the letter, arrival, the sadomasochism, the effect on the mother, Erika and her wanting to leave?

13.Her return, the brutality?

14.The next day, the recital, Anna and Erika’s treatment of her, the tuition, leading her on, malicious towards her, Anna’s mother? The ruining of the performance? Walter and the group? The stabbing?

15.Erika as a psychological case study, the role of art and beauty in her life, serenity and home, family, her mother? Yet the demons, her madness, repressed sexuality, cause and effect?