Product: La Pianiste (Original French Version)
Rating: 4.0
Love/Seduction vs. Wisdom/Youth
The boundaries of love and despair have possibly never been granted so desperate a stage as the slowly weakening lines on the ever-beautiful face of Isabelle Huppert in THE PIANO TEACHER.Erika (Huppert) is a middle-aged piano teacher who spends her existence vascillating between torturous control over the lives of child geniuses and the smothering watchfulness of an aging, dispassionate mother. However, when a young piano-playing engineer (Benoit Magimel) enters her life with his young mind on his lusty attraction, Erika's life begins to unravel. Trying to maintain control, she continues to seek ways to express her innermost feelings without surrendering to the power of emotion -- having been trapped in an emotionless existence for so long. Eventually, she cracks under the stress of her two worlds colliding, with equal parts psychological danger and the allure of eroticism.Two haunting performances (Huppert and Magimel) make this story as captivating as it is disturbing. In the end, both characters are forever changed, unable to return to the solace of the world they knew before and unwilling to sacrifice their outer shells for inner peace.Not for the squeamish, THE PIANO TEACHER is highly recommended.