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12/06/05
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The Piano Teacher (2002)
73
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:80
Fresh:58
Rotten:22
Average Rating:6.9/10
Consensus: Though it makes for rather unpleasant viewing, The Piano Teacher is a riveting and powerful psychosexual drama.
Runtime: 2 hrs 5 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Theatrical Release:Mar 29, 2002 Limited
Box Office: $727,786
Synopsis: Erika (Isabelle Huppert) teaches classical piano in a cold and often abrasive style. Approaching middle age, she lives with her doting mother (Annie Girardot) and still sleeps in the same bed with... [More]
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Benoit Magimel, Annie Girardot, Susanne Lothar
Director: Michael Haneke
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Reviews for The Piano Teacher
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12/24/02
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12/30/06
Seems less like a fictional story than a tour through Freud's forgotten files.
05/24/02
painfully bleak and disheartening...brilliantly made and uncompromising
05/01/02
Anyone who's ever suffered under a martinet music instructor has no doubt fantasized about what an unhappy, repressed and twisted personal life their tormentor deserved. These people are really going to love The Piano Teacher.
04/12/02
There are several images that will haunt you after the movie is over. Not an easy film to watch, but worth the effort.
06/07/02
It's a fascinating movie, one that is often difficult to watch and yet impossible to turn away from.
06/27/02
To get at the root psychology of this film would require many sessions on the couch of Dr. Freud.
07/13/02
A disconcertingly assured tango between tenderness and brutality.
05/24/02
Top CriticMichael Haneke's latest torture mechanism is less funny game than daunting debasement ritual.
03/14/02
This is a penetrating, deeply disturbing examination of desire and loneliness, of desperation and self-denial.
11/04/02
Top CriticThis austerely stunning film reminds us that not all art is pretty.
05/17/02
Top CriticBrash, 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.
05/13/02
At once difficult to watch and impossible to ignore, a brilliant and uncompromising portrait of a character both loathsome and pathetic.
06/05/02
This riveting psychodrama probes the subject of sadomasochism with laser-like intensity.
03/29/02
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.
02/26/02
Top CriticThe strong subject matter continues to shock throughout the film. Not everyone will play the dark, challenging tune taught by The Piano Teacher.
06/20/02
A brutal and absorbing portrayal of a repressed woman who takes refuge in sado-masochistic sexual games.
03/14/02
There's hardly another actress in movies who could inhabit this Viennese specimen without seeming ludicrous -- and there may not be another who would care to.
03/26/02
Top CriticLatest News for The Piano Teacher
May 24, 2009:
Cannes 2009: The Tomato Report - Haneke's The White Ribbon Scoops Palme d’Or
Michael Haneke took Cannes' top honour tonight as his film, The White Ribbon, won the prestigious Palme d'Or. It's Haneke's third major Cannes prize but his first Palme d'Or.... More...
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