| This
film centres around the character of Erika a virtuoso pianist
and and piano teacher who, approaching her 40's, lives at home
with her strict and repressive mother, and is seemingly scared
of physical intimacy. One of her pupils Walter, a vain young man,
make his interest in her clear, and with her frustration rising
she consents to Walters advances but bars physical intimacy and
instead writes her instructions about the parameters of the sexual
relationship in a note to him. She reveals her wishes for him
to physically hurt her, but Walter does not want this and rejects
her. In her desperation she begs him to take her back and promises
that she will be "normal". But the intimacy doesn't
go to plan and Walter castigates her and informs her how much
her views disgust him. She leaves distraught but she is determined
to prove something to him.
This
is one of the most intense cinematic studies on the nature of
intimacy. Superbly portayed by the incomparable Isabelle Huppert
|