(2002; French) "You're sick," Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel), a handsome young student says to Professor Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert), his piano teacher. "You need treatment. You repulse me." Her classical, idealized conception of love requires her being in control, determining beforehand the rules - she writes Walter a letter of instructions describing in detail what he may and may not do to her - unwilling to compromise, risk being hurt by seduction and rejection. While I can appreciate intellectually director Michael Haneke's adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek's novel, watching the scenes of sexual deviancy made me uncomfortable.

Erika lives with her mother (Annie Girardot) who treats her with suspicion; in anger Erika calls her mother a bitch and a cow. Parental love has been perverted. A demanding taskmaster of her students, unable to show them compassion, Erika says to one, "Music must not be drenched in indifference or sentimentality," and to another playing Beethoven, "a wrong note is better than a bad interpretation." The inner life (practice, preparation) precedes the outer life (actual performance) which must be resolved by coincidence.

After attending Erika's Bach recital, Walter, an engineering major but possessing musical talent, applies and auditions for acceptance to her master-class instruction; she hesitates to agree, questioning his seriousness. Theory comes before reality in the search for truth. Schubert and Schumann, both of whom went mad, are her favorite composers because of their struggles within the mind's twilight; her father died insane.

Sexually repressed, Erika goes to a news stand to view pornographic videos in a booth; she becomes a voyeur in a drive-in movie theater to observe a young couple fornicating. The subjective masters the objective by means of discipline and denial of emotion. Ignoring her indifference and discouraging words, Walter begs her to give him a chance after his sacrifices for an opportunity to become her student. Music here is metaphor, appealing and thus seductive; but Erika wants to hear Schubert performed with ugliness to be understood and appreciated.

Following her piano rehearsal for a Schubert recital, Erika's student Anna Schober suffers a serious injury to her right hand. "No one must surpass you, my girl," says Erika's mother. Having eliminated another competitor, Erika will replace her pupil, playing accompaniment to the male singer. Perhaps to perfect her interpretation of Schubert's works Erika too must achieve a similar state of madness.

Forget your mother and your scruples, Walter urges Erika, and give yourself to the anarchy of love. Late at night, following Erika's coming to him after hockey practice, appealing to him for forgiveness and promising to give herself up to love, Walter comes to her apartment - "Is this what you imagined?" - his brutal fantasies unlocked, calling her a bitch and a cow: "We can't play just by your rules."

(Some of the ideas in my review were borrowed from an interview with actress Isabelle Huppert in which she stated that the movie is largely about Erika's idealized idea of love versus her fear of being seduced and hurt.)

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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