Product: La Pianiste (Original French Version)
Rating: 5.0
It stays with you for days
I saw this film in Paris last October. Director, Michael Haneke has delivered an incredibly powerful film based on a controversial Austrian novel. Isabelle Huppert plays Erika, a brilliant piano professor at a college in Vienna. At work she is respected among her peers and indimidating to her students. At home, she lives with her tyrant mother (Annie Girardot). Erika and her mother have an emotionally abusive co-dependent relationship to the point where they share the same bedroom. Erika's sex life consists of eerie visits to porno shops and sadistic self-mutilation. When one of her students (Benoit Magimel) attempts to seduce her, she agrees but on HER terms.A family film this is not. There are some very disturbing scenes of emotional and physical abuse. But as difficult as the subject matter is, it does help the viewer to understand the psyche of a woman who has been denied happiness all her life. Isabelle Huppert is fantastic in a very difficult role. Her performance of the tortured Erika is the only time, I've seen a character so disturbed and cruel who I found pity in and wanted to see succeed. Forget the Oscar nominations, this is the best female performance of the year! Annie Girardot and Benoit Magimel are wonderful and very convincing in their roles as well. Lastly, the director, Michael Haneke. I've never seen any of his previous work but few directors have the ability to take complete control of my attention and keep it long after their film is over. Haneke is one of the very few who did. "La Pianiste" is a masterpiece, I recommend it to anyone who has an appreciation for European cinema.