Unlike, I suspect, the jury at Cannes, I'd seen a really good film - "A Passage to India" - for the first time, not more than 24 hours before first seeing "The Piano Teacher". I can see how you might be sucked in to thinking the latter was a good film if you hadn't encountered one in a while. But if you HAD seen anything good immediately beforehand you'd wonder how this obsessive bludgeoning of the viewer with acts of twisted nastiness could even be mistaken for good art. Isabelle Huppert's performance? Admittedly she does keep us watching, keep us following her to see where she'll go...
Spoilers follow.
We start by watching a piano teacher who's at once very good and very bad: mercilessly cruel (in creative ways, so that nobody is ever really prepared) to her students, she holds a respected post because she is, after all, talented, and her insults are painful precisely because they're backed by knowledge and even, musically speaking, wisdom. Her cruelty is enough to make her a genuine monster, just as her mother's cruelty to to her is enough to make HER a genuine monster. Then, suddenly, we see her walk into a porno parlour, take in a hardcore flick, and sniff a tissue that had been soaked in some former male customer's semen; see her sneak up on and watch a couple having sex at a drive-in; see her masturbate a male student in the women's toilets at the conservatory, but refuse to let him finish... and it's all downhill from there. I'm thinking: WHY are we seeing this? Almost every famous figure in history and, we must assume, in fiction as well, has his or her sexual secrets. Most are allowed to remain secret. Biographers and authors, if they are wise, will pass over these things in silence unless they have specific reason not to: let these people have their privacy, for goodness sake.
It's only towards the very end that we find that Haneke has decided to make the fetishes Erika Kohut pursues in her off hours when nobody's looking, part of the main show, because they afford him yet another opportunity to show us the virus of cruelty: from Erika's mother, to Erika, spreading outwards further (well, to Water, who must have been especially susceptible to begin with; I trust most people would not behave so badly with so little provocation), every single interaction of any kind ending up as no more than another opportunity for one of the two parties to assault the other and Haneke to assault the audience. Yes, I get the point, whether because I worked it out myself or because I read it in other people's comments I'm not sure: the music Erika plays so well speaks of a joy which she no longer knows how to navigate towards in her own life, and just as she's been blighted this way, she will in turn blight others. Well acted, Huppert; well said, Haneke, in a one-note kind of way (although please do note: there's no particular reason, certainly no good reason, that your film as a whole should be as joyless or as merciless as its central character); but does this make for a decent film, one worth even the time spent watching it? Just recently I've seen the real thing, and I'm not fooled.
The following is something of a cheap shot, since the flaw I'm picking up on is just the result of an almost ubiquitous convention, but I feel I'm justified under the circumstances: in a film so determined to be unflinching, uncompromising and free of artifice, why is it that all conversations in Vienna are conducted in French?
Spoilers follow.
We start by watching a piano teacher who's at once very good and very bad: mercilessly cruel (in creative ways, so that nobody is ever really prepared) to her students, she holds a respected post because she is, after all, talented, and her insults are painful precisely because they're backed by knowledge and even, musically speaking, wisdom. Her cruelty is enough to make her a genuine monster, just as her mother's cruelty to to her is enough to make HER a genuine monster. Then, suddenly, we see her walk into a porno parlour, take in a hardcore flick, and sniff a tissue that had been soaked in some former male customer's semen; see her sneak up on and watch a couple having sex at a drive-in; see her masturbate a male student in the women's toilets at the conservatory, but refuse to let him finish... and it's all downhill from there. I'm thinking: WHY are we seeing this? Almost every famous figure in history and, we must assume, in fiction as well, has his or her sexual secrets. Most are allowed to remain secret. Biographers and authors, if they are wise, will pass over these things in silence unless they have specific reason not to: let these people have their privacy, for goodness sake.
It's only towards the very end that we find that Haneke has decided to make the fetishes Erika Kohut pursues in her off hours when nobody's looking, part of the main show, because they afford him yet another opportunity to show us the virus of cruelty: from Erika's mother, to Erika, spreading outwards further (well, to Water, who must have been especially susceptible to begin with; I trust most people would not behave so badly with so little provocation), every single interaction of any kind ending up as no more than another opportunity for one of the two parties to assault the other and Haneke to assault the audience. Yes, I get the point, whether because I worked it out myself or because I read it in other people's comments I'm not sure: the music Erika plays so well speaks of a joy which she no longer knows how to navigate towards in her own life, and just as she's been blighted this way, she will in turn blight others. Well acted, Huppert; well said, Haneke, in a one-note kind of way (although please do note: there's no particular reason, certainly no good reason, that your film as a whole should be as joyless or as merciless as its central character); but does this make for a decent film, one worth even the time spent watching it? Just recently I've seen the real thing, and I'm not fooled.
The following is something of a cheap shot, since the flaw I'm picking up on is just the result of an almost ubiquitous convention, but I feel I'm justified under the circumstances: in a film so determined to be unflinching, uncompromising and free of artifice, why is it that all conversations in Vienna are conducted in French?