The Piano Teacher

18

Erika (Isabelle Huppert) is a piano professor in her late thirties who lives in a small apartment with her mother, an overbearing woman who attempts to keep her in line. Uptight and lonely, Erika wanders the streets of Vienna at night, engaging in acts of voyeurism, before going home to self harm.

When the younger, charming but arrogant Walter enters her life, his admiration for her piano playing and their shared interest in composer Franz Schubert brings them together. But Walter's persistant attempts to seduce the reluctant and repressed Erika culminates in violence when she eventually reveals the unusual sexual desires she has kept hidden for so long.

Isabelle Huppert delivers a career-high performance as a woman whose unwavering need for control will be her downfall, often cited as one of the best female screen performances of all time and an inspiration for Oscar-winners like Nicole Kidman and Mikey Madison.

Based on the 1983 novel by Austrian Nobel Prize-winning author Elfriede Jelinek, Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher is a portrait of a woman tightly-wound and ready to snap: a masterful study of perversion, power dynamics and female desire.

Presented by Pervert Pictures: the Leeds-based film club screening provocative and challenging films.