The Piano Teacher (2001)

Thursday, February 14, 2019 @ 7:00 PM
Globe Cinema - 617 8th Ave SW, Calgary, AB
$12 General | $10 Members/Seniors/Students | $40 5-Pack Punch Pass | $99 Season Pass

DIRECTED BY MICHAEL HANEKE | AUSTRIA/FRANCE | 131 MINS.

Adapted from a casually nasty novel by Austrian Nobel Prize-winning author Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher finds Jelinek’s countryman Michael Haneke, cinema’s reigning laureate of emotional glaciation, casting Isabelle Huppert for the first of what would subsequently prove to be numerous times, arguably in the defining role of her career. The Piano Teacher tells the story of Erika (Huppert), a piano instructor at a Viennese conservatory. Erika sleeps in the same bed as her aging mother, with whom she has a fraught and deeply pathological relationship, the two women emotionally cut off from the world outside. When a young male student enters her world, Erika’s deeply repressed fantasy life begins to warp her, precipitating a series of increasingly aberrant sexual outbursts. More than one commentator has described Huppert’s performance in The Piano Teacher, which won her her second Best Actress Award at Cannes, as one of the finest in the history of cinema. Huppert’s icy and inscrutable affect works supremely well with the classicism of Haneke’s austere vision, and when called upon to go to extreme places in unflinching, voyeuristic long takes, she fearlessly takes up the challenge. It is unquestionably as brave a performance as you will ever see.

- Written by Jason Wierzba

SPOTLIGHT: ISABELLE HUPPERT

First appearing on screen in 1971, Isabelle Huppert has amassed more than 130 credits over the course of a remarkable and varied career. Indeed, she is considered by many to be the finest screen actress of her generation, having worked with many of the greatest directors of the postwar era. Whether in her famous extended collaborations with Claude Chabrol and Michael Haneke or in one-off partnerships with a who’s who of contemporary notables, Huppert is famous for her icy intelligence, intensity of affect, and subtlety of craft. Though her consistency is beyond dispute, it would be neglectful in the extreme to pigeonhole this fearless actress; while she can indeed be ruthless and inscrutable as she famously is in films such as Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, she is equally at home conducting amorous combat in Maurice Pialat’s Loulou or participating in the merry madcap antics of Serge Bozon’s Tip Top. Huppert, who has won and/or been nominated for innumerable awards, remains in a class of her own.

About Calgary Cinematheque

We are a non-profit film society dedicated to presenting significant, challenging, and essential works of cinema art in Calgary. During our season, which runs from October to April, we screen films weekly, in curated programs which situate each film in a thematic and historical context. We do this because we believe cinema is an essential form of artistic, social, and political expression. Audiences should be able to engage with a wide range of cinematic expression, not only with what is commercially viable. We believe in the power of sharing these experiences with other people in a theatrical setting and we strive to cultivate a community around that experience.  

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