Dir. Michael Haneke

2001 | 131 mins | Austria | German, French

Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoît Magimel

Isabelle Huppert plays Erika Kohut, a brilliant piano teacher and Schubert scholar whose emotional life is frozen into stagnancy and self-harm. When she conceives a passion for a handsome young student (Benoît Magimel), she tells him that their relationship can only involve him beating her – and there is nothing sex-positive or celebratory about this BDSM.

Huppert plays the role with severity, mad anger and fear of love. It is coldly magnificent and plays a major part in The Piano Teacher’s representation of repression in polite European culture.

Screening as part of our Complicit: A Michael Haneke retrospective.

Michael Haneke’s often unnerving work explores alienation, violence and the disengagement of the bourgeoisie. The two-time Palme d’Or winner is a precise chronicler of social failings, and his confronting films force us to question our own upholding of the status quo.

Playing throughout August.

The films in this season feature themes of sexual violence, incest, suicide, harm to children, assisted dying and graphic violence. For more information, please refer to the guidance provided by the BBFC.

BBFC Rating

Rated 18 – Contains strong language, violence, sexual violence, sex and sado-masochism theme

Venue: Studio 74, Exeter Phoenix

*Subject to a £1.50 ticketing system charge. We don’t charge this to make a profit. Find out more >>