(2005). International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 86:1205-1212 Perversion annihilates creativity and love: A passion for destruction in The Piano Teacher (2001) Director Michael Haneke and Harriet Wrye This film, with a French, German and Austrian cast, and released simultaneously in French as La pianiste and in German as Die Klavierspielerin, is a viscerally clenching and dark cinematic portrayal of enmeshment, repression, sadism, masochism and destruction. The tight and conflicted characterization of Professor Erika Kohut, the piano teacher, portrayed by Isabelle Huppert, reveals a dark labyrinth of mother-daughter bonds and bondage. The tension of the film's dramatic narrative, augmented by a soaring romantic musical score, dramatizes the excruciating strangulation of creative jouissance and vitality that perversion can foster. The film portrays a life in which the exquisite humanism of the music she plays and teaches cannot ultimately save her tormented soul. In this review, I will focus on how the film may be viewed from a relational psychoanalytic perspective, as an elaboration of the relationship between the early mother-child bond and sado-masochistic defenses. In this [This is a summary or excerpt from the full text of the book or article. The full text of the document is available to subscribers.] |
