A torrid affair

La Planista or The Piano Teacher is centred on Erika (Isabelle Huppert), a hard-as-nails disciplinarian who teaches at the famous Conservatory in Vienna and also gives lessons at home. She is single and lives with her equally strong-willed mother (Annie Girardot).

Among her students is handsome, virile but not so talented Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel) and she doesn’t hesitate to pull him up for his lack of application or talent or both. “Schubert is no walk in the park,” she tells him and even votes against his admission to the Conservatory. But the others outvote her.

But all this angst changes slowly as the lonely spinster is physically attracted to the young stud. Her pent up emotions burst open and a torrid love affair ensues. It is a sort of reaction to years of loneliness and a nagging mother. Her only diversion is appeasing her perverse sexual appetite through porn videos, voyeurism and masturbation.

But all this changes when she is drawn to Walter, though even while making love, Erika wants to call the shots much to his ire. But he has to cope with this. Now playing piano goes out of the window and Erika is like a tigress on the love path.

Director Michael Haneke does well to establish the strict taskmistress that she is. The piano-playing shots from the ceiling are impressive. So are her curt lines with her students. But then the action shifts from music to love and love-making.

There are some erotic scenes and at times the mother is in between. But one is virtually able to feel the burst of her emotions. It isn’t surprising that both Isabelle Huppert and Benoit Magimel won the Best Actress and Best Actor awards at Cannes in 2001. And in veteran French actress Annie Girardot they find able support.

The ending may be a bit overdramatised but the fare is thoroughly enjoyable and gripping despite its 130-minute duration. It is part of the Isabelle Huppert Retrospective whose Lacemaker (1978) was her first success. But ever since she has dominated the French screen like no other actress showing her immense versatility. — E.E.M.

A tale of grit

Brazilian filmmaker Jayme Monjardin brings Fernando Morais’ bestseller, Olga, pulsatingly to life, writes Ervell E. Menezes

A little girl jumps over a small fire but not before telling her parent: “If I fall, I won’t cry.” This little incident at once establishes the grit and tenacity of the woman who will fight and die for what she believed in.

Olga Benario Prestes (Camila Mogardo) is that steely woman who joined the Reds to fight against the Nazis and Brazilian filmmaker Jayme Monjardin brings Fernando Morais’ best seller pulsatingly to life as he captures her chequered career as one who wanted to dispel injustice, misery and war.

“Children and family are not for us,” she tells Otto, one of her Communist associates but when she has to accompany Communist leader Luis Carlos Prestes (Caco Ciocler) to Brazil as his wife, she falls in love with him and their love story is handled most sensitively by Mongardin who imbues the film with a rare exuberance. The action scenes stand out in stark contrast to the romantic ones.

Olga’s separation from her family is traumatic. Her mother disowns her 
forever. But her father is more considerate. When she asks him whether he’s on the side of the rich or the poor, he answers that he is “on her side.” She also explains her dilemma, “Father I don’t know what I want but I do know what I do not want.” It shows her honesty.

Her next mission is to accompany Luis Prestes and here much against their wishes they fall hopelessly in love. In the meanwhile, the Communists are doing their best to fight the Nazis and these two are undercover agents.

But their problems begin when they are apprehended. And then the dreaded torture and the gas chambers which have become so familiar to Hollywood cinema. That she is deported to Germany and gives birth to a daughter Anita (by Luis) adds to the drama but the road is downhill, right to the gas chambers.

May be the film is a wee-bit too sentimental and some of the nudity could have been avoidable but on the whole it is gripping most of the time. The close-ups and the use of light are brilliant and so are the action scenes.

In Camila Mogardo, Mojardin has a brilliant actor who is able to portray a vast range of emotions from the tough to the sensitive and some of the lines clearly embellish the character.

Caco Ciocler is also good, though not in the same league and together they form a great pair and there are a few good cameos, especially by Fernando Montenegro as Luis’ mother.

It could have been clipped by at least 20 minutes but even so it is a great film and should be among the best of IFFI-05.

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