Product: La Pianiste (Original French Version)
Rating: 1.0
Lust in the Lavatory
Shortly before seeing this film, I watched a DVD of Bertolucci's " The Dreamers", both for the first time. It was informative to compare the two products of film-makers who are regarded as serious practitioners of the Art, and whose work often incorporates explicitly sexual material that risks demeaning their serious intent and exposes them to the charge of gratuitous audience titillation. In the case of Bertolucci's movie, the sex was graphic and not in the best of taste, but one could argue that it had a place in the lives of its young protagonists who were representative of much of their generation: narcissistically focused upon their own self-gratification and freedom of expression at a time when freedom of expression as a whole was under restraint by the State. Not until their indulgence brought their cocooned existence crashing down did they see fit to join those at the barricades fighting for universal freedom.With "The Piano Teacher", it is an altogether different matter. We are exposed to two hours of sordid behaviour, self-destructive as well as destructive of others, by a totally deranged individual (Erika) with no redeeming feature beyond a certain musical talent, and no causal factor other than a domineering mother and a father who is mentioned only briefly, but who apparently went mad and killed himself. Even if we accept these as partially exonerating, it still leaves the whole experience as no more than a case-history of lunacy with no universal relevance and no political, moral, religious, ethical or philosophical purpose. The interview with Isabelle Huppert, who plays Erika, included with this DVD reveals the lack of anything meaningful that all concerned in its production have to communicate to its audience. She describes the objective of the director and the motivation of the central character that she plays as an attempt to explore the search for " true love without the taint of seduction". What garbage! On this premise, genital mutilation, maternal incest, fornication on the floor of a public toilet, and submission to requested flagellation and physical brutality, all become justified as acts of "true love". It is clear that Huppert has no valid idea of why she is doing the awful things she is required by the director to perform; viewed in this light, her much-lauded performance becomes no more than a meaningless charadeinvolving a limited repertoire of scowling gestures and hysterical outbreaksthat soon become boring and irritating to watch.It does not help that the other characters are equally unattractive, at least in their behaviour. As the object of Erika's perversions, Benoit Magimel initially presents as a sensitive and charismatic young man, but his descent into frenetic violence instead of simply walking away from an impossibly unsavoury relationship ruptures that bond of empathy with the viewer. The technical skills of Michael Haneke are evident in the composition of many of the frames and sequences that give this film an artistic texture, coupled with the gorgeous music of Schubert, Bach and others that introduce brief interludes of sanitizing poetry. His serious talent, demonstrated in "Cache" and "The White Ribbon" persuaded me to discount the 16 1-star reviewers and heed the recommendations of the 54 who awarded the movie 5 stars, especially as many of the latter came from intelligent and critically eloquent film buffs. I was fully conditioned by his above-mentioned movies to become immersed in the lives of thoroughly unlikeable individuals, since these seem to represent the only segment of humanity in which he is interested. I expected the compensation of a challenging and thought-provoking experience in return. All I got was senseless depravity without meaning or justification.