The Piano Teacher
ピアニスト
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A Vienna conservatory professor hands her student a letter of instructions; the most unsparing film about a woman's desire.
Erika Kohut, thirty-nine, is a piano professor at the Vienna conservatory: severe, exacting, respected. At home she shares a flat, and a bed, with her domineering elderly mother; her late father spent years in a psychiatric asylum. What Erika wants has gone underground, into voyeurism, masochism and secret self-harm.
At a recital in a private home she meets Walter Klemmer, a charming young engineering student and gifted pianist who loves Schubert and Schumann as she does. He auditions to become her pupil. Moved by his playing, she still votes against him, but he is admitted and courts her openly. When she sees him laughing with Anna Schober, a nervous student driven hard by her own mother, Erika hides broken glass in Anna's coat pocket. The girl's hand is cut too badly to play at the coming concert, and Erika will play in her place.
Walter follows her into a lavatory and kisses her. She takes control, humiliates him, and breaks off when he disobeys her rules, promising him a letter. In her bedroom he reads it aloud: a list of what she wants done to her, including being tied up and beaten. Repelled, he calls her sick and leaves. That night Erika throws herself on her mother in the bed they share, kissing her, until her mother pushes her away.
Erika seeks Walter out at his ice-hockey rink to apologise and offers herself to him, but when they try to have sex she is sick. Late that night he comes to her flat, locks her mother in a room, and does what the letter described: he beats and rapes her while she begs him to stop.
The next day, bruised, Erika waits in the concert hall's foyer. Walter arrives with his family, greets her lightly, and goes in. She harms herself, and walks out of the building into the street.
Starring
Isabelle Huppertas Erika Kohut
A severe piano professor in Vienna who lives with her mother and keeps her desires locked in secret rituals.
Erika Kohut’s story
Erika treats her students with contempt and goes home to her possessive mother. She votes against taking Walter, a young engineering student who plays Schubert, into her class, but he is admitted and courts her openly. Seeing him laugh with her pupil Anna, she hides broken glass in Anna's coat pocket, and takes the injured girl's place at the concert. Pursued by Walter, she humiliates him, then gives him a letter listing what she wants done to her. He calls her sick. She seeks him out to apologise, but cannot go through with sex. That night he comes to the flat, locks her mother in a room, and beats and rapes her while she begs him to stop. At the concert next day he greets her lightly, laughing with his family. She harms herself, and walks out into the street.
Benoît Magimelas Walter Klemmer
A charming young engineering student and gifted pianist who pursues Erika and cannot accept the terms she sets.
Walter Klemmer’s story
Walter studies engineering, plays piano well and shares Erika's love of Schubert and Schumann. She votes against him as her pupil, but he gets in and pursues her openly. When he follows her into a lavatory to kiss her, she humiliates him and stops when he breaks her rules, promising a letter. He reads it aloud in her bedroom: what she wants done to her. He calls her sick and leaves. When she comes to his ice-hockey practice to apologise, he says he loves her, but she cannot go through with sex. That night he comes to her flat, locks her mother in a room, and does what the letter described: he beats and rapes her while she begs him to stop. The next day he arrives at the concert laughing with his family, greets her lightly and goes in.
Annie Girardotas Erika's mother
Erika's domineering elderly mother, who controls her daughter's life and shares her bed.
Why it matters
The Piano Teacher is about what becomes of desire that has never been allowed out into the open. Erika has lived her whole life under her mother's control and inside the discipline of her art, and what she wants has taken forms that repel the one man who asks for her. Michael Haneke, adapting the 1983 novel by Elfriede Jelinek, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, refuses both easy readings: this is neither a story of liberation nor a case study. When Walter acts out her letter, the film makes plain that a fantasy written down, carried out against her will, is rape. At Cannes in 2001 it won the Grand Prix, and Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Magimel won the acting prizes. It leaves open how a person learns to want anything at all when no one has ever let her.