Tuesday, May 31, 2011
POUND ON MY KEYS
:Today's film was the first of the Michael Haneke films I am seeing.
La pianiste / The Piano Teacher (2002)
with Isabel Huppert.
Piano teachers. I had four or five. Six. The first was a wonderful spinster who was strict and tough. After that, I suffered from the lax ones. I gained some. But I never got as much as I did from working with Miss Kern.>
This piano teacher is in that Kern mode. Tough. Up tight. Deeply into the music and if you can't do the work fuck off.
She is deeply repressed, lives with her mother and has wild sexual fantasies which she acts on.
On this side, we have gorgeous music, mostly Schubert and on that side we have the porn shop with the little room you go into to watch the video and sniff the Kleenex.
She meets a guy and he is smitten. She finally has a chance to act out her fantasies. Guess what? The sadistic piano teacher is an M.
He doesn't want any part of it but wants to do something. The film is about this power struggle. Beauty and the beast. Love versus lust. Tie me up, tie me down.
Sometimes hard to take, always riveting and suspenseful. How many films about piano teachers have you seen let alone be on the edge of your seat or piano bench.
I am making light of this because it really got under my skin seriously.
Haneke is interested in making the viewer a participant. For many scenes we are the ones at the piano. Later we are in the middle of the "fight". It is no walk in the park.
Huppert is great and so is her fantasy lover Benoit Magimel.
The contrast between the great music and the twisted sex is considerable. The settings are reminiscent of Jordan Hall in Boston. A lot of music. Musicians. The musician's life.
A great start to the Haneke fest. A 4 out of Netflix5.
Labels: films
