La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher)
2001
**
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoît Magimel, Susanne Lothar, Udo Samel, Anna Sigalevitch, Cornelia Köndgen
Erika is a sexually repressed piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory who lives with her overbearing mother. She is slowly and somewhat reluctantly drawn to an increasingly abusive relationship with a young piano student named Walter. With past works like Benny's Video, The Seventh Continent, and Funny Games, Michael Haneke is no stranger to controversial topics or unhinged characters. This adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek's 1983 novel is right up his alley, and it definitely offers some uncomfortable scenes. Unfortunately I could not get in the heads of these particular damaged individuals. The moral of the story is, careful what you wish for. The story takes place in an odd French-speaking Austria, and some of the Austrian actors were clearly post-synched.
