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The Piano Teacher is in the spirit of such venerable
sadomasochistic classics as Belle Du Jour, Last
Tango I n Paris, In The Realm Of The Senses, The
Night Porter, and both Blue Velvet and Mulholland
Drive. Erotic props in such films can include anything
from sticks of butter to broken glass, but however shocking
the devices, the themes are reliably weighty: human suffering,
alienation, gender trouble.
Welcome to the world of art-porn where the lighting is tasteful,
the music is often classical, and there is more social commentary
than you can shake a stick at to accompany the kinky voyeurism
you crave. Rest assured that these are not hardcore films
made for pathetic men in rumpled raincoats, but rather, serious
films made for more discerning perverts. We may be
in the gutter, but it’s in an upscale neighborhood.
Given such two-faced attitudes, in which a taste for the
sensational is excused by the reassurance that such films
are intellectually important, art-porn often treads a fine
line between the genuinely moving and the laughably absurd,
which can leave a disturbing aftertaste. But the truth is
that once the soft-core porn and intellectual pretensions
get audiences into theater seats, movies like The Piano
Teacher can still do what any other effective movie from
any other genre can do— make us question what it means to
be human. This can work only if the film and the audience
are willing to take some emotional risks. Does The Piano
Teacher measure up as art-porn?
Erika Kohut ( Huppert ), a brilliant music teacher,
still lives at home with her domineering mother ( Girardot
). Erika, who has no real life of her own, finds comfort
on the sly in solitary sexual acts. She frequents peepshows
where she sniffs used tissues left behind by previously satisfied
customers. She sneaks into drive-ins, not to see the movies,
but to spy on couples fucking in the backseats of cars. Like
The Piano Teacher’s target audience, she likes to watch.
The film is appropriately set in Vienna, the music capital
of Europe, the birthplace of decadence, and Freud’s
hometown.
Her activities may seem grotesque, but they are essentially
harmless, until Erika becomes more extreme, elegantly quoting
Schubert on madness and “the twilight of the mind”
in one scene and cutting her genitals with a razorblade in
the next. Then she turns her violence on others, jealously
filling one of her gifted student’s coat pockets with broken
glass in order to mutilate her hands.
When Walther ( Magimel ), a beautiful, chivalrous
young man, hears Erika play Schubert at a recital, he falls
in love with her and she is fascinated by him. In the great
tradition of art-porn romance, he doesn’t realize who she
really is or what he’s gotten himself into. During their first
sexual encounter, Walther begs Erika for warmth, intimacy,
and straight vanilla sex. She responds by startling him with
her desire to control the action like a film director (“Put
your penis away… Now, take it out again! No penetration! Wait
for my instructions!”). Later she confesses that what she
really wants is to be tied up and beaten while her mother
is locked in a nearby room! Poor Walther, he’s such a nice
guy, he just wants to love and be loved in return. But this
is not Moulin Rouge, it’s more like 9 1/2 Weeks
and when Walther tries, out of frustration or love or both,
to fulfill Erika’s desires, disaster ensues.
Why are there only two ways to have sex with somebody in
The Piano Teacher— the “normal” romantic way or the
sick, “transgressive” way? And why does the film make Walther
look merely troubled, while Erika is downright psychotic,
as if that’s the inevitable destination of dabblers in deviance?
Great art-porn appeals to our stereotypical notions of kinky
behavior not just by titillating us, but by playing with our
disgust, challenging us by making us uncomfortable, forcing
us to go one step further and question the nature of what
we think is deviant and why. Movies don’t have to be warm
and fuzzy, but what’s wrong with creating some good old-fashioned
empathy?
We don’t have to agree with Erika or even understand her,
but we don’t have to dehumanize her either. The film gives
us a way to excuse Walther because he acts out of understandable
frustration and desire. But what about Erika? The Piano
Teacher punishes its title character and effectively stops
us from questioning our reactions to her or our definitions
of deviance by making her a monster. As a result, the movie
humiliates her, and even worse, perversely appears to fulfill
her desire to be beaten up by doing so. Does it question what
she wants or give her what she wants? This isn’t cutting-edge
commentary on sex or alienation, it’s a common slasher film
with highbrow credentials.
The flipside of this phenomenon is the insistence, which
perennially appears during summer blockbuster season, that
movies like Mr. Deedsor Scooby Doo are cool
because we don’t have to think. In fact, it’s cool not to
think! Just enjoy yourself! Going to The Piano Teacher
or to Mr. Deeds are just different sides of the same
coin. Whether you go to broaden your intellect or to deny
its existence, the result is the same. Let’s face it, going
to see a movie like The Piano Teacher, which received
the benediction of the Cannes Film Festival by winning its
top prize, is an invitation to be a more serious film goer,
a better person, than if you line up to see Men In Black
II, isn’t it? If that’s why you show up for this film,
you’ll get what you deserve. Risque, but never really risky,
it is as cynical and heartless, in its way, as any cartoon-colored,
cavity-inducing Hollywood product.
—Ellen Whittier
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While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
