The Piano Teacher

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The Piano Teacher (French title: La Pianiste) is a 2001 film directed by Michael Haneke, starring Isabelle Huppert and Benoit Maginel. The film, also known as The Piano Player, is based on the novel Die Klavierspielerin by Elfriede Jelinek, Nobel Prize for Literature winner in 2004.

Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Erika (Isabelle Huppert) is a piano professor at a Vienna music conservatory. Although in her late thirties, she lives in an apartment with her overprotective and controlling mother (Annie Girardot). Lonely and alienated, she has an unhealthy love-hate relationship with her mother. She is a first-rate teacher but cruel to her students, even attempting to ruin a talented girl. Behind the prudish façade, she is a sexually repressed woman with a long list of extreme fetishes. Upon meeting a charming engineering student in his twenties, she becomes obsessed with Walter (Benoît Magimel), who is also a capable performer and shares in her appreciation for Schumann and Schubert. However, when she finally agrees to a relationship with the insistent young man, he is unable to accept her sado-masochistic fantasies. After an unsatisfying attempt, the two return to their lives as if nothing had changed.

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