Where was my dear old Andrew Sarris when I needed him? I went to the Rotten Tomatoes site, knowing that he would've said something cutting and efficient. But his review couldn't be accessed. A shame...I remember his terms like Antoniennui and his description of Siodmak. And they're apropos, let me tell you. This movie is very good. A great performance (as nearly always) by Huppert. Fairly serious use of classical music (although the use of the scherzo of the Schubert A major sonata as Walter's tool to impress Erika was a risible choice - a relatively "light" movement, and the performance of the Schubert trio was really lackluster). Lots of good things...But I have to mourn the death of the radical artist I thought (after seeing Funny Games) Haneke had the possibility of becoming. He chose instead to participate in the dissemination of one of the most exhausted tropes of world cinema: stylish perversion. Funny Games seemed to be a critique of Austrian society (and, by extension, society in general) from within: the manners, the politeness, the superciliousness, the "culture", the unostentatious ostentatiousness. It was brutal and unsentimental. This film is the "grown-up" version, ready for the feuilletons and the coffee - table discussions: what is masochism, really? When a woman is a masochist, and she chooses it, isn't she really the one in control?...blah, blah, blah. It's a film! Not a think piece in the Sunday paper! It's got the yummiest Art Direction I've seen in a long time. Every raincoat matches every wallpaper, and so on. Good taste! He's gonna go in the direction of Bertolucci without ever having made his "Conformist". And that's too bad! My advice to Michael: rent Pickup on South Street...but it's probably too late.
Review of The Piano Teacher
