MOVIE · 2001

The Piano Teacher

DramaRomance131 min

Isabelle Huppert is Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher who lives with her domineering mother and keeps her desires under tight control. When Walter (Benoît Magimel), a younger student drawn to her reserve and authority, begins pursuing her, their connection becomes a volatile contest over intimacy, shame, and power. Moving between lessons, the tense apartment she shares with her mother, and Erika’s private rituals of voyeurism and self-denial, the film places the discipline of classical music beside impulses she has long kept hidden.