Based on the semi-autobiographical book by Vienna's Nobel Prize-winning poet, playwright and novelist Elfriede Jelinek, this is a psychological study that rejects psychology, an erotic drama of surpassing coldness, and a story of
amour fou in which the madness is calculated and the love frozen. Middle-aged, failed concert-pianist Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) teaches at the prestigious Vienna State Music Conservatory and lives with her fiercely controlling mother (froggy voiced Annie Girardot), whose thwarted ambitions for Erika's career have curdled into bitter determination that her daughter will achieve nothing else. Erika badgers and belittles her student...
Released:
2002
Rated:
NR
Length:
130 mins