IMDB Score – 7.3
RT Score – 73%

Best Actor Cannes Film Festival – Benoît Magimel
Best Actress Cannes Film Festival – Isabelle Huppert
Grand Prize of the Jury Cannes Film Festival – Michael Haneke

Okay, so I have been watching a lot of very difficult films lately. This is the third film by Michael Haneke that I have seen now after really liking Code Unknown and considering Cache is one of my favorite films ever. This however was definitely the most difficult to watch based on how grim and depressing the protagonist. Isabelle Huppert plays a gifted piano professor and scholar who has a dark secret…masochism. The movie follows this development as she meets and befriends a student. The film is a serious character study as we are shown some disturbing realities on how people live and deal with their problems. Masochism is a problem by the way. It isn’t a fetish. It isn’t normal. That is some deranged shit brought on by serious childhood trauma. This is obviously just my opinion but when you watch Huppert’s character go through these motions you can’t help but feel sick and sad for somebody so f’ed up in the head. Haneke crafts a haunting film but leaves, as normal for him, so many unanswered questions. It’s a brutal film slowly drained of human emotion which is ironic because there is so much beautiful music in this film. I appreciated it for what it was and Huppert was just, well, amazing really. I just didn’t really take to the subject matter and really wanted to the film to end as soon as possible.

3.5/5