The Piano Teacher

Sharp and cold, like shattered glass in one of the scenes, the film is about the pain that was tightly enclosed within a very proper forty-year-old girl.

Erika (Isabelle Huppert) is a pianist, a strict and elegant teacher at the Vienna Conservatory. Her students fear her, colleagues respect her, and listeners admire her. No one knows that the heroine still sleeps in the same bed as her controlling mother, who monitors her every move. Moreover, no one suspects that in the evenings, the respectable teacher visits adult video salons, diligently trying to penetrate the unknown secrets of human intimacy, and under the bed she keeps a set of sadomasochistic devices that have never been used. When a young and devilishly self-assured student starts pursuing Erika, the years of accumulated desire burst out, taking on bizarre and dangerous forms.

 The film received three Golden Palm branches: for best male and female roles and the Grand Prix of the jury.