Title from disc surface. Based on the novel Die Klavierspielerin by Elfriede Jelinek. Originally released as a motion picture in 2001. Wide screen (1.85:1). Film rating provided from IMDB.com web page for film and may not be present on container packaging. Special features: new interview with Michael Haneke; new interview with Isabelle Huppert; selected-scene commentary from 2001 featuring Huppert; behind the scenes footage featuring Haneke and Huppert; trailer. . Container insert includes an essay "Bad Romances" by film scholar Moira Weigel. Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoît Magimel, Susanne Lothar, Georg Friedrich, Anna Sigalevitch.
Summary:
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.
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