The Piano Teacher

Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.

La Pianiste
France, Austria 2001
  • Czech
131 min.
15+
  • This film is available until 31. 3. 2025 in these territories: Czechia, Slovakia.
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About

Erika Kohut teaches the piano at the Viennese Academy. She is single and lives with her mother who stifles her with her love and tyrannises her incessantly. The cultured, cool and unapproachable yet still attractive Erika has a secret passion: she visits sex shops and watches porn films at the cinema. Her abnormal sexuality brings out her voyeurism and masochistic self-infliction. She lives in relative calm, enclosed in her world between her classes and arguments with her mother, until the day that one of her pupils decides to try to seduce her. The film was based on the book by Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek who does not deny introducing certain auto-biographical traits into her novel.

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Credits
Director: Michael Haneke
Based on: Elfriede Jelinek
Screenplay: Michael Haneke
Cinematography: Christian Berger
Sound: Jean-Pierre Laforce, Guillaume Sciama
Editing: Andreas Prochaska, Nadine Muse, Monika Willi
Production Design: Christoph Kanter
Producer: Veit Heiduschka, Michael Katz
Costumes: Annette Beaufays
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoît Magimel, Anna Sigalevitch, Susanne Lothar, Udo Samel, Cornelia Köndgen, Thomas Weinhappel, Georg Friedrich, Philipp Heiss
Awards

Cannes Film Festival

2001 – Michael Haneke (Grand Prize of the Jury)

Cannes Film Festival

2001 – Benoît Magimel (Best Actor)

Cannes Film Festival

2001 – Isabelle Huppert (Best Actress)

European Film Awards

2001 – Isabelle Huppert (European Actress)

César Awards

2002 – Annie Girardot (Best Supporting Actress)

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

2001 – Michael Haneke (Audience Award)

Links
  • This film is available until 31. 3. 2025 in these territories: Czechia, Slovakia.