It happened when I saw Inside for the first time at the Lincoln Center theater last year, and it just happened now as I reached the coldly tragic end of Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher.
I've read all of the predominantly polarized word on Haneke's films: how they're brutal without showing much, and effecting through sporadic images of violence and extremities. The Austrian filmmaker has a pretty uncanny knack for upsetting his audience; the only other films of his I've seen are both versions of Funny Games, meaning the Austrian original and last year's remake with Naomi Watts. While the virtually shot-for-shot remake admirably didn't lose much in translation, Haneke's 1997 first-run is still my preference, because the first time experiencing Funny Games is a pretty off-putting, nihilistic ride, whether you're a fan or a plain-old hater. I'm not exactly ecstatic about it, but it's certainly a film/story that I respect in many ways.
The Piano Teacher, though, I'm totally unsure of. What I am certain of is that it's easily one of the most perverse, bleak character studies I've ever seen, and that's saying something. It's a quiet, focused, twisted look at Professor Erika Kohut, a middle-aged piano teacher who lives with her somewhat-domineering mother. She's ice-cold, shunning off warm conversations and remaining all about her business. But she meets a young, good-looking dude named Walter, who also happens to love classical music and enjoys playing it. He's taken aback by Erika's key-playing, and becomes smitten with her, signing up for her class just to get closer to her. Too bad she's the most sexually-confused-and-deranged women this side of a porno star locked away in a looney bin.
As he keeps trying to wiin her over and she repeatedly shuns him before going down on him and giving him the worst case of blue-balls imaginable, we start to see the cracks in Erika's sexuality. She sneaks off into a grungy peep-show booth to watch porno movies where girls give guys' head, watching the smut with her mouth covered by a cloth; she shuts her bathroom door with a mirror in her hand, and then cuts near her vagina while watching the incisions through the handheld mirror; after being rejected by Walter, she jumps on top of her mother in a desparate plea for love, crying while she tries to make out with her mother (eww, gross....exactly....she even says to ma dukes: "I saw the hairs on your sex." Spewing, allowed); and then, in a tide-changer of a scene, she gives Walter a letter that lists all of the things she'd like him to do to her sexually, which includes tying her up, beating her, and talking to her as if she's some trashy slave. Yes, Erika harbors some holy-shit intensely sick S&M fetishes, which disgust Walter. He rejects her, and from this point on is when The Piano Teacher gets really tough to watch.
Erika is played by Isabelle Huppert, and she gives a blazer of a performance. It's a seriously tough character to play, one that demands layers upon layers of subtle vulnerability and silent domination. The scenes of sexual dementia between Huppert and Benoit Magimel, who plays Walter, are all believably revealing. Especially the climax when [SPOILER WARNING] Walter, infatuated by Erika, storms into her apartment, locks her mother in a room and proceeds to beat Erika, in hopes that his carrying out her sexual requests will serve as some sort of aphrodisiac. It doesn't, however, and Erika is frightened and left speechless. Walter, confused and frustrated, basically rapes her, Erika remaining motionless as Walter thrusts upon her and continues to absolve himself by trying to console her. It's a chilling scene, filmed with nearly the same amount of unflinching voyeurism as the subway tunnel rape in Irreversible.
The Piano Teacher is actually an adapatation of a book by an author named Elfriede Jelinek, so I guess the "you're one sick fuck, dude" reactions should be hurled at him more than Haneke. But the film version is what I've just taken in, so Haneke is my target. And that's not to say "target" as an implication that I didn't like The Piano Teacher. Any time a filmmaker can craft a character study that both fascinates and appalls me, I must applaud. With an ending scene that really sucker-punched my gut, the film is definitely one I'll be thinking about for the next couple of days. Not one I'll rush back to watch again, but a movie that I'd love to discuss with some other heads who've seen it. Good luck finding them, I tell myself. You should've went to film school, you tool; if you had, you would have tons of friends who'd also spend an otherwise relaxing Monday night watching a woman vomit after a dude busts in her mouth.
Would I recommend The Piano Teacher? Sure, but only to those who share the same diesel sense of "the more strange and dark the film, the better" as yours truly.
Don't all stand up at once, now.
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