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NUMBERS
Box Office: $727,786
details...
CONSENSUS
Though it makes for rather unpleasant viewing, The Piano Teacher is a riveting and powerful psychosexual drama.
CAST & CREW
Isabelle Huppert, Benoit Magimel, Annie Girardot
Directed by Michael Haneke
more...
SYNOPSIS
Erika (Isabelle Huppert) teaches classical piano in a cold and often abrasive style. Approaching middle age, Erika lives with her doting mother (Annie Girardot) and still sleeps in the same bed with her. more...
MPAA RATING
Not Rated
RUNTIME
2 hours, 5 minutes
RELEASE DATES
Theatrical: Mar 29, 2002
Video: Nov 5, 2002
RELEASE COMPANY
Kino International
GENRE
Foreign Films, French, Drama, Romance, Drama (General), Sex, Sadomasochism (S&m)
OFFICIAL SITE
• The Official The Piano Teacher Site
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TIDBITS
AWARDS
LINKS
SUBMIT/EDIT ARTICLE
SUBMIT USER REVIEW
FORUM
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 "Huppert and Girardot give performances of exceptional honesty."
-- The Wolf, IOFILM.CO.UK
 "It may be a prize winner, but Teacher is a bomb."
-- Phil Villarreal, ARIZONA DAILY STAR
"The Piano Teacher is the sort of movie that discourages American audiences from ever wanting to see another foreign film."
-- Jeff Vice, DESERET NEWS, SALT LAKE CITY
"Dazzling in its complexity, disturbing for its extraordinary themes, The Piano Teacher is a film that defies categorisation. It haunts, horrifies, startles and fascinates; it is impossible to look away. Ah yes, and then there's the music..."
-- Urban Cinefile Critics, URBAN CINEFILE
"At once difficult to watch and impossible to ignore, a brilliant and
uncompromising portrait of a character both loathsome and pathetic."
-- Frank Swietek, ONE GUY'S OPINION
"The strong subject matter continues to shock throughout the film. Not everyone will play the dark, challenging tune taught by The Piano Teacher."
-- Gerry Shamray, SUN NEWSPAPERS OF CLEVELAND
"The Piano Teacher, like its title character, is repellantly out of control."
-- Ed Scheid, BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE
"Overall, the film misses the brilliance of Jelinek's novel by some way. It settles for being merely grim."
-- Tony Rayns, SIGHT AND SOUND
"Haneke challenges us to confront the reality of sexual aberration."
-- Mary F. Pols, CONTRA COSTA TIMES
"Brash, intelligent and erotically perplexing, Haneke's portrait of an upper class Austrian society and the suppression of its tucked away demons is uniquely felt with a sardonic jolt."
-- Frank Ochieng, MOVIE EYE
"It is depressing, ruthlessly pained and depraved, the movie equivalent of staring into an open wound."
-- Roger Moore, ORLANDO SENTINEL
"Leaves viewers out in the cold and undermines some phenomenal performances."
-- Maitland McDonagh, TV GUIDE'S MOVIE GUIDE
"painfully bleak and disheartening...brilliantly made and uncompromising"
-- Arthur Lazere, CULTUREVULTURE.NET
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"Haneke has created a character who walks the edges of madness and reason, who acts on impulses that are odd and abhorrent, who seems totally foreign to her audience, but remains entirely, terrifyingly, human."
-- Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, POPMATTERS
"Haneke keeps us at arm's length. Guided more by intellect than heart, his story flattens instead of sharpens."
-- Lisa Stokes, ORLANDO WEEKLY
"To get at the root psychology of this film would require many sessions on the couch of Dr. Freud."
-- Dennis Schwartz, OZUS' WORLD MOVIE REVIEWS
"Huppert gives Erika a persona that is so intriguing that you find yourself staring hypnotically at her, trying to understand her and wondering if she'll crack."
-- Steve Rhodes, STEVE RHODES' INTERNET REVIEWS
"You really have to salute writer-director Haneke (he adapted Elfriede Jelinek's novel) for making a film that isn't nearly as graphic but much more powerful, brutally shocking and difficult to watch."
-- Jon Popick, PLANET SICK-BOY
"Directing with a sure and measured hand, [Haneke] steers clear of the sensational and offers instead an unflinching and objective look at a decidedly perverse pathology."
-- Jean Oppenheimer, NEW TIMES
"Subversive, meditative, clinical and poetic, The Piano Teacher is a daring work of genius."
-- Kim Morgan, OREGONIAN
"Much as we might be interested in gratuitous sexualization, Haneke has a different objective in mind--namely the implications of our craving for fake stimulation."
-- Joe McGovern, MATINEE MAGAZINE
"Is like The Graduate remade by David Lynch; it's no picnic to watch, but you can't look away."
-- Moira MacDonald, SEATTLE TIMES
"Haneke's script (from Elfriede Jelinek's novel) is contrived, unmotivated, and psychologically unpersuasive, with an inconclusive ending."
-- Jim Lane, SACRAMENTO NEWS & REVIEW
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FRESH 87%
Avg. Rating: 8.4/10 |
"Watching Haneke's film is, aptly enough, a challenge and a punishment. But watching Huppert, a great actress tearing into a landmark role, is riveting."
-- Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
"Not for the prurient or squeamish, it's a daring if overlong examination of an idolized culture, self-loathing and sexual politics."
-- Jane Sumner, DALLAS MORNING NEWS
"A disconcertingly riveting anti-love story."
-- Jan Stuart, NEWSDAY
"This is a smart movie that knows its classical music, knows its Freud and knows its Sade."
-- Jeff Stark, SALON.COM
"Those who would follow Haneke on his creepy explorations ... are rewarded by brutal, committed performances from Huppert and Magimel."
-- Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
"Once one experiences Mr. Haneke's own sadistic tendencies toward his audience, one is left with a sour taste in one's mouth, and little else."
-- Andrew Sarris, NEW YORK OBSERVER
"... a pretentious and ultimately empty examination of a sick and evil woman."
-- Richard Roeper, EBERT & ROEPER
"If the film had been in less-capable hands, the subject matter could have easily lent itself to eye-rolling ridicule, but Huppert and Haneke manage to keep the credibility intact, at least up to a point."
-- Michael Rechtshaffen, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
"Although Huppert's intensity and focus has a raw exhilaration about it, The Piano Teacher is anything but fun."
-- Steven Rea, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
"The Piano Teacher is not an easy film. It forces you to watch people doing unpleasant things to each other and themselves, and it maintains a cool distance from its material that is deliberately unsettling."
-- Geoff Pevere, TORONTO STAR
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"The dramatic crisis doesn't always succeed in its quest to be taken seriously, but Huppert's volatile performance makes for a riveting movie experience."
-- Kevin Lally, FILM JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL
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* Who are the Approved Tomatometer Critics?
* Mouse over a tomato icon for a publication's original rating. Original rating not available for every publication.
* In fairness to critics whose last name begins with a letter at the end of the alphabet, certain pages are sorted in reverse order, z-a.
* Certain "The Piano Teacher" article data provided by the Movie Review Query Engine.
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lepetitchat78
| If I could be anywhere: "Back in Cuba, sitting Indian style on the Malecon. Mojito in one hand, handsome revolutionary in the other." |
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