Pollard Memorial Library (Lowell)

The piano teacher., La Pianiste, an Austrian-French co-production, Wega Film, MK2 Productions and Les Films Alain Sarde, Arte France Cinéma ; producer, Veit Heiduschka, Marin Karmitz, Alain Sarde ; writer and director, Michael Haneke, Widescreen

fre

videorecording

MPAA rating: R; for aberrant sexuality including violence, and for language, OFRB rating: R

The piano teacher.

1000539856

an Austrian-French co-production, Wega Film, MK2 Productions and Les Films Alain Sarde, Arte France Cinéma ; producer, Veit Heiduschka, Marin Karmitz, Alain Sarde ; writer and director, Michael Haneke

130

Criterion Collection, 894

La Pianiste

Academy Award winning Austrian director Michael Haneke shifted his focus from the social to the psychological for this riveting study of female sexuality and the dynamics of control, an adaptation of a controversial 1983 novel by Elfriede Jelinek. Haneke finds his match in Isabelle Huppert, who delivers an icy but quietly seething performance as Erika, a middle-aged piano professor at a Viennese conservatory who lives with her mother, in a claustrophobically codependent relationship. Severely repressed, she satisfies her masochistic urges only voyeuristically until she meets Walter (Benoît Magimel), a young student whose desire for Erika leads to a destructive infatuation that upsets the careful equilibrium of her life. A critical breakthrough for Haneke, The Piano Teacher which won the Grand Prix as well as dual acting awards for its stars at Cannes is a formalist masterwork that remains a shocking sensation

live action

Pianiste

Widescreen