Product: La Pianiste (Original French Version)
Rating: 5.0
Provocative perversions pleading for an audience...
I happened to watch this film again last night, and I must say that Haneke is a director you have to allow to infiltrate you're way of thinking in order to really understand his work. He has a very distinct viewpoint and is certainly a visionary, and so his films carry with them hidden layers of emotional confliction that I think are pertinent to appreciating them. `La Pianiste' is a dark and disturbing film that could be (wrongfully) disregarded as perverse filth, but there is so much more involved here.Throwing this film to the side due to its graphic nature is denying it the admiration it deserves.The film centers around a middle aged woman named Erika Kohut, a piano teacher who lives at home with her mother and secretly hides her own perverse fantasies; sneaking off to buy smut and witness adult films. Erika is cold and seemingly bitter, a woman who is envious of her young students and strangely dependant on her mother. Her world is turned upside down when she encounters a young man named Walter Klemmer, an arrogant student with talent who cares little for music itself and more for the attention his hands can get him. Erika is repulsed yet fascinated to the point where she dares let him inside her head. Once he has been allowed to see her for who she really is, he challenges her, defying her wishes and showing her that her own desires are not necessarily her own.Michael Haneke is known for his dissection of violence and society. He is constantly tackling that very subject with fresh ideas that capitalize on his gritty sense of realism and sharp eye for detail. Taking the lines one crosses, meshing together the emotions of love and hate, Haneke creates a startling character study that leaves the audience much like Erika, and later Walter...Repulsed yet fascinated.The character of Erika Kohut is a mesmerizing one, because she is so easily condemned for her actions and desires but this is a grave misunderstanding of a woman oppressed by her natural surroundings. She is a woman who has suffered the loss of a father (to insanity) and continually suffers the confinement that comes from paternal control (her mother still treats her as if she were a child). She is lost within her own passions, surrounded by young students who lack the knowledge she has yet she is grossly aware that they will amount to more than she ever will. She is insulted by their mediocre talents. Erika is also alone, lonely within her own view of love. Being controlled and looked down on, she craves someone to dominate her. She puts up the air that she is cruel and controlling and domineering, but she is begging, pleading with the world to knock her down. She has such lack of control within her own life that she needs to control her idea of intimacy. Finding escape in the voyeuristic engagements suited for a prepubescent boy, Erika taints her own understanding of love by feeding herself the filth propagated by the media. She becomes her own worst enemy, and thus falls victim to her own carnal misunderstandings.When Walter gives in and `gives her what she wants', it literally destroys her.The film is, on its own, a masterpiece and a force to be reckoned with, but without the dedicated and fearless performance given by Isabelle Huppert the film would not have had nearly the effect needed to sustain it. When you think of performances that `go there', that really throw caution to the wind and allow themselves to embody a single character, this is one that should instantly come to mind. Huppert does shy away from the character flaws within Kohut. She attacks them head on, unlocking this characters inner most secrets and exposing her full frontal for the world to see. With a performance that includes self mutilation, public urination, proposed incest, total humiliation and twisted perversions of the unmentionable kind, Huppert never flinches in her delivery. What is even better is that she accompanies each scene with the needed emotional connection to make it wholly believable. Watching the coldness melt off her face as she faces rejection from the one she has bared her soul too, it is unbelievably sympathetic. For a woman who has been so rigid and so evil (enough to viciously attack a student) we feel an honest sense of connection to her in that state of turmoil.Huppert is accompanied by some great supporting players, not the least of which is Benoit Magimel, who stuns as her lover Walter. Witnessing his initial admiration for Erika dissipate into a hysterical observation and then completely manic obsession is brutal and nerve-racking. Annie Girardot is wickedly amusing as Erika's mother, a woman who is at the center of her daughters own collapse.In the end, `La Pianiste' is NOT a film for everyone, but it is a film that will provoke you and stir you enough to validate its existence. Michael Haneke is not a shy director, and he does not create fluff films. His films are meant to be analyzed, studied and discussed. If you are looking for a film that will challenge you, then this is a film you should witness.