The Piano Teacher

Director Michael Haneke, who achieved notoriety for his horrifying film about home invasion, Funny Games, comes back with a far less horrifying (though still incredibly horrifying) film about a middle-aged piano teacher and her masochistic relationship with a young pupil. If watching a woman try to rape her elderly mother is too much for you, then by all means pass on this film. If you think you can stand that, and such other delights as self-mutilation, vomiting during sex, and a hand pierced by shards of glass, then you might find that the artistic merits of Piano Teacher are worth the horrors it subjects you too. It’s certainly the work of a master filmmaker, but his penchant for going too far, and his slow pacing intentionally undermines much of the pleasure of viewing the film.