Product: La Pianiste (Original French Version)
Rating: 5.0
Disturbing, surprising, and very powerful.
Many of the reviews have provided very good plot summaries, descriptions of major scenes, etc., but none have really given a good description of how this film makes you, as the viewer, feel. This is a pity, because here we have a powerful film that leaves you unsettled and puzzled. The main characters are far enough askew that you cannot identify with them, but real enough that you empathize. Moreover, while it is easy to say that the sado-masochistic themes are what makes this film troubling, there are really many layers where we are stymied in our hope for resolution and explanation.Clues are strewn throughout the story, bits of history that we latch on to in our quest to understand why this piano teacher is so cruel, why she withstands the abuses of her mother, why she mutilates herself. The easy answers are unsatisfactory. She abuses her mother as much as she is abused. Her father went crazy, but was there something unspeakable in his past? She is a perfectionist, but seems jealous of others. Inevitably we attempt to use these clues to "solve" the puzzle, but our piano teacher always seems one step ahead in eluding us. Further, this leave-a-clue/elude-resolution pattern continues through the final scene of the film, thus we cannot attempt to understand or explain it until after we have seen it in its entirety. Watch this film with someone and you will spend hours discussing it in an attempt to understand it. Usually, when my wife and I watch a film, we discuss how it fits in with other films, its potential importance and influence(s). With this film our discussion never made it outside the film - we were trying to understand the characters.This film changes the way you look at other people. When we are introduced to the main characters,Erika Kohut and her student Walter Klemmer, we see characteristics that remind of of others we know. Yet as we learn more about them, we are disturbed. We don't like what we find when we cross from the public to the personal - and by extension we begin to wonder about those around us, even how we appear to others. That we never resolve the characters, that we never figure out how to categorize and place them, exacerbates this disruption of our view of humanity. The real and the surreal are so tightly woven in the characters that we lose confidence in our ability to discern. We become a bit like Walter Klemmer who is clearly flailing in his attempt to regroup after his teacher reveals a bit of her "real" self.While the film is disturbing, the shock comes from the characters, particularly Erika. Her actions defy our sensibility, and while there are serious sexual overtones - if not plain sexual actions - in the film, everything is so much imbued with a sense of pain and emotional sickness that we are shocked rather than titillated. Visually the film is beautiful, if a bit dark. Sense of space, mood, and feeling change with ease. This is a film that looks natural, rich, and vibrant. The disjuncture between the public scenes and the private interior of the characters (again, primarily Erika, though Walter throws us a few curves) is part of what makes this film work so well.Again, I highly recommend this film, but with the stipulation that it is not for the weak of heart.