The Piano Teacher

Erika Kohut teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory and lives in a closed world with her controlling mother. She is in her early forties, and her life away from the conservatory is split between secret visits to porn cinemas and peep shows and the private rituals she keeps hidden at home. One of her students, Walter Klemmer, decides to pursue her, and the attraction between them is met by responses from Erika that neither he nor anyone around them expects. What begins as courtship turns into a contest in which each side tries to impose its own terms.

The film is Michael Haneke's eighth feature as director, following Code Unknown and preceding Time of the Wolf, and he also wrote the screenplay. Isabelle Huppert plays Erika, with Annie Girardot as her mother and Benoît Magimel as Klemmer; the credited cast runs to twenty-seven names, among them Susanne Lothar, Udo Samel and Anna Sigalevitch. It was produced across Germany, Austria and France by Veit Heiduschka, Marin Karmitz and Alain Sarde, and cost about 6 million US dollars.

Released in September 2001, it took roughly 7 million dollars worldwide, a modest return against its budget. On IMDb it holds 7.5 out of 10 from more than eighty-two thousand votes, and on TMDB 7.3 from around one thousand three hundred. A critics' rating of 7.5 from ninety-two reviews places it alongside the audience scores rather than above them.