The Piano Teacher

Dir. Michael Haneke (2001).
This tale of a former musical prodigy and her controlling mother provides a lurid study in sexual pathology, as well as a tour-de-force role for Isabelle Huppert. Michael Haneke—who orchestrates Elfriede Jelinek’s supple, sardonic novel with his customary heavy-hand—keeps the preternaturally poised Huppert onscreen for virtually the entire movie, as well he might. There’s not another actress who could inhabit this Viennese specimen—heart consecrated to Schubert, head-churning fantasies to make Sacher-Masoch blush—without seeming ludicrous.

Thu., May 20, 7 & 9:30 p.m., 2010