Product: La Pianiste (Original French Version)
Rating: 1.0
One of the worst movies I've ever seen
Despite the praise heaped on this movie, it is awful. The acting that is so ballyhooed involves lots of tense, pursed lip movements, shot in long stills with a piano playing in the background. The piano playing is really irrelevant to the plot (though of course the movie pretends otherwise). There is a lot of sick violence towards the viewer, in the form of unnecessary and crass depications of supposedly shocking and or titillating sick violence. It's a poorly conceived story bolstered by unconvincing and cheaply theatrical psychology.This is the sort of movie that shows rather than reveals. In one of the most pretentious scenes, the main character assaults her mother, with whom she shares a bed, in an almost sexual way, and this is supposed to symbolize some emotional cataclysm that is otherwise undeveloped in the movie. The central love story is thrown at the viewer, and the sources of the central character's depraved violence against self and others are suggested only in an incoherent way.This movie exemplifies what happens when a weak director tackles a complicated subject. This is not a character study, as some claim, as the main character is nothing more interesting than a fastidious and vicious psychopath. The male lead is a handsome but unexpressive face, who does an alright job of playing an obnoxious violent man hiding beneath a veneer of culture (this role might have had some interest, had it been developed).It's depressing that so many people liked this pathetic movie. `Natural Born Killers' was a better movie.