4. The Piano Teacher (2001)
Directed by Michael 'Funny Games' Haneke, The Piano Teacher features versatile French actress Isabelle Huppert as Erika Kohut, a piano professor in a swish Austrian music institute. Although she is in her 40s, Erika lives with her elderly domineering mother. Her father is confined to an insane asylum. The film gradually reveals all of Erika's transgressive sexual behaviour and activities which include SM, voyeurism and sexual self mutilation. Erika meets 17 year old Walter Klemmer. There is an attraction between them and Walter becomes Erika's student. Erika is insanely jealous of a girl called Anna, who is close to Walter. In an act of pure wickedness, she puts shards of glass in Anna's pockets - ruining her career as a pianist due to the injuries sustained. Walter is determined to get into Erika's knickers. He is not so desperate that he accepts her violent fantasies and acts them out with her - rather he is turned off by them and rejects Erika. She stabs herself in the shoulder and it is implied that more acts of self mutilation will occur. Isabelle Huppert is what make this transgressive masterpiece so good. She is an incredible actress who will do anything to portray her character so realistically on the screen - giving up all of her ego to be as true to the role as possible. She was rightly awarded and critically praised for her work in the film. Although she is a transgressive pervert, it was hard to watch the rejection of Erika by Walter. She is so cold, so alienated and controlled by her mother that listing the sexual fantasies she has and showing them to someone, that is an act of deep trust and intimacy. To be humiliatingly dumped after this must have been very hurtful - and indeed Erika feels the need to self mutilate - to punish herself further and remain alienated and trapped in her own private hell. Not a jolly film to watch, it is instead a sober character portrait of a lonely, sexually transgressive woman who is destined never to achieve happiness.