Lock up your sons
I think I was molested by Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, but boy oh boy, I sure did like it
The Piano Teacher is not easy to watch. It is, in fact, one of the most disturbing, troubled, overwhelming and harrowing portraits ever committed to celluloid. It is also a beautifully acted, brilliantly directed and altogether unforgettable experience.
As Erika Kohut, a 40-year old Viennese piano teacher at a respected conservatory, the always impeccable Isabelle Huppert delivers what is doubtlessly her finest performance. Seemingly incapable of genuine human connection and content only within the music of Schubert and Schumann (the latter whom, like Erika’s father, spent the final years of his life in an asylum), Erika’s only respite from her disconnection is through a series of shocking and sadistic sexual rituals.
Walking home from a day of teaching, Erika strolls into a sex shop, heads straight into one of the busy porn booths at the back, and fishes a used tissue out of the garbage can. Coldly observing the bump-and-grind on the screen in front of her, she holds the discarded rag over her face and inhales.
Life holds no further normalcy at home, either,where Erika resides in a state of utter dysfunction with her overbearing mother (Annie Girardot), with whom she exchanges blows more often than kisses. That they sleep in the same room, two beds placed side-by-side, certainly doesn’t help matters. Their lives have become so intertwined – in a battle between a mother refusing to give up control and a rebellious daughter somehow unable to live without her – that even their sleeping hours are spent together.
In perhaps the film’s most disturbing passage (it’s difficult to pick just one), Erika sits on the edge of a bathtub and, for lack of a better term, misuses a razor blade while her mother calls her to the table for dinner. In the following scene, the disgusted elder Kohut berates her daughter for failing to notice the blood dribbling down her leg – how dare she have her period in the dining room! In Claude Chabrol’s recent Nightcap, Huppert rendered her own Hitchcockian mother figure, while here she must deal with one of the worst. The two actresses create a familial interplay so tense that it’s nearly enough to prompt legislation requiring all children to move out of their parents’ homes by the age of 25.
Following a recital, at which she meets the young Walter Klemmer (Benoît Magimel), Erika believes she has finally found a willing partner who is capable of keeping up with her sexual demands, which she outlines in a lengthy and graphic letter. Magimel plays Walter as an upwardly mobile golden child, unable to shake his attraction to Erika regardless of her requirements.
Rife with material for any armchair Freudian, The Piano Teacher makes no judgments of its own. Director Michael Haneke gives no easy reasons or escape routes for his characters (never mind his audience), opting instead to force us to watch Erika’s life in long, unblinking takes, and then sort through the debris ourselves. For example, when Walter’s advances turn violent, Haneke makes a point of keeping things muddy – is Walter truly striking out in anger and disgust, or are his actions all prescribed by Erika’s letter? Haneke not only wants us to squirm in our seats, but to fully confront and comprehend what we’re seeing. Through simply not telling, The Piano Teacher requires extra effort (and eventually a surprising sense of empathy) to understand Erika. That Haneke manages to inject such an overriding sense of humanity – and a surprising sense of humour – into the proceedings is a genuine miracle.
While the world fawns over Audrey Tautou (yeah, yeah, I know Amélie is splendid and all, but can li'l pigtails do this?), Huppert continues to quietly amaze viewers (she picked up the Best Actress award at Cannes for her performance here, as did Magimel for Best Actor and the film won the jury's Grand Prize). In a recent review, Roger Ebert equated Huppert’s acting abilities to that of the Great Stoneface Buster Keaton, and while both actors play on opposite sides of the comedic-dramatic spectrum, it’s certainly an apt comparison. In short, there is no other actress who could pull off Erika Kohut with such nuance. By the final scene, Huppert’s eyes have grown into the saddest, emptiest and heaviest eyes in the world.
Given short shrift by a far too limited one-week run in Calgary, the only way left to experience The Piano Teacher is, unfortunately, on home video. Luckily, both the DVD and VHS versions have been kept in the widescreen presentation format. Whether or not you want to welcome Erika Kohut into your home is up to you. Long after the film is over, Erika and the rest of The Piano Teacher won’t easily move out. |
