![]() She has a handsome young student named Walter ( Benoit Magimel). She returns their furtive glances with a shriveling gaze. If she were obviously a prostitute, they could handle that, but she's apparently there to indulge her own tastes, and that takes all the fun out of it, for them. The male clients are presumably there to indulge their fantasies about women, but faced with a real one, they look away, disturbed or ashamed. ![]() There is a scene where she visits a porn shop in Vienna, creating an uncomfortable tension by her very presence. That she sleeps in the same bed with her domineering mother is no doubt a clue-but to what? Erika is fascinated with the sexual weaknesses and tastes of men. Demanding, severe, distant, unsmiling, she leads a secret life of self-mutilation. She is Erika Kohut, 40ish, a respected instructor at a conservatory of music in Vienna. In Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher," which won three awards at Cannes 2001 (best actress, actor and film), she plays a bold woman with a secret wound. ![]() She knocked on the door of a Paris studio, she said, and announced, "I am here." Was she kidding? I peered at her. I interviewed her in 1977, asking her how she got her start in the movies. ![]() There is a self-assurance in Isabelle Huppert that defies all explanation. ![]()
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