Rated R, directed by Michael Haneke, with Isabelle Huppert (Erika Kohut), Annie Girardot (The Mother), Benoit Magimel (Walter Klemmer), running time: 130 minutes.
Erika is a piano professor and Schubert scholar at the famous Vienna Conservatory and is well-known for her severe instruction of her students. In the evenings, however, she is a frequent visitor of pornography video shops and goes to the drive-in cinema to spy on lovers making out in cars, finding a desperate avenue for her desire. More severely, she is sometimes drawn to self-mutilation with a razor. One day, a bright young man named Walter Klemmer, attracted by her cold, mysterious exterior, wants to enter Erika's world. She rejects his tender emotional pursuit and tortures him both psychologically and physically with a series of disturbing sex games. Ultimately she gives in to his love, only to find that Walter, equally disturbed, violently and sadistically lashes back at her.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CMPC
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