| RATING: | 60% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
Piano Teacher
Disturbing,
The style is a flat rendering of events, as we come to see that the central character is a female masochist because of her choice not to overcome the baleful affects of her controlling mother’s neurotic neediness in not letting her daughter grow up. Like many such trawls through the minds of the mentally ill, no cure is ever offered - just a clear-eyed description of the disease; leaving the audience with the queasy feeling that this is just another sleaze-fest.
Isabelle HUPPERT (as one would expect) is excellent playing someone you would normally feel a great deal of contempt for - her character’s pain is as palpable as the actresses’ bravery in playing someone so detestable. But we never really care for her and by the time the film has ended, we have begun to wonder why she does not simply kill herself since her life is so emotionally unrewarding that she must focus all her attention on ensuring that no-one is more highly-regarded as she. The film lacks perspective and so we feel disgusted rather than enlightened, unlike, say, Last Tango in Paris or Night Porter.
The music that the eponymous piano teacher teaches how to play is centuries-old Western classical that is adhered to by Whites as a means of not moving on culturally - especially given that contemporary Western classical music is so poor in comparison. This leaves Whites with a mediocre present; endlessly worshipping the glories of the past as a way of avoiding the problems of the present; making the social milieu the film portrays a superb metaphor for many of the characters inner turmoil and outer placidity - as well as the emotional coldness of much of the music on offer here.
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