As soon as they saw the poster, the audience must have some guesses about the plot of the movie: in a place like a bathroom, a man with only his back and a woman were sitting on the ground in a twisted embrace. what are they doing? Why is this happening? This mentality pushes me to look down.
The film presents us with a "interrogation" scene from the very beginning: the mother endlessly interrogates her daughter who returns late, that is, the heroine. The mother began to abuse her daughter because she bought a new skirt, provoked insults between the two, and fought violently, eventually tearing the skirt. Anger Erica broke her mother's head, and the two "reconciled" in tears - at this point, we see the first peace since the opening. This beginning gave me a little shock. It shows the undercurrents lurking within a peaceful family, and also reveals what the heroine Erica's twisted home environment—being in the same room with, or even sleeping with, her controlling mother—has brought to her psyche s damage.
Mother and daughter go to bed, night falls, and the prelude ends. The title «Piano Teacher» has just appeared and the film has just begun. The director explained the background of the story to us in such a way. The title faded, and the camera looked down at a piano on which a pair of skilled male hands played; after a while, the teacher's rather critical criticism could be heard. The scene is black, cut to the title, and cut to another student, who we can tell from her hands is a girl; the teacher is emphasizing the pacing for her. The scene is black, and then cut, and this begins the piano music that runs through the whole film; Erica reads the German lyrics to the rhythm, while teaching the female students to master the strength and rhythm. The scene is dark, and cut again, between classes, Erica looks out the window. The scene is dark, cut again, a male student is playing the piano, Erica looks out from the window against the dazzling white light, and criticizes from time to time. Screen black, still cut, finally, the end of the day's work, Erica packed up and prepared to go home, a simple trench coat and suede gloves tightly wrapped, a serious old maid image.
The final episode, Switch, sees Erica and her mother dressed up for a family recital. The first encounter with the hero Walter is in the elevator: Erica and her mother are inside, Walter is outside. Without getting on the elevator, Walter had to rotate up the stairs. His flexibility was clearly in stark contrast to Erica, who was enclosed in a corner of the elevator. During the concert, Walter was fascinated by Erica, staring at her intently; during the meal, he eagerly exchanged his views on music with Erica. After the meal, Walter changed the tune he had prepared for Xun Berg and played Schubert's movement to his liking. Listening to Walter playing, Erica's picture intersects with the sound of the next day, and then the picture turns to the next day. It was the same female student, nervous and unsatisfactory in her emotional interpretation. She was scared to tears by Erika's criticism.
At the end of the day, let's see where Erica has gone. In the mall, she brushed past others, and after a few seconds, she subconsciously and nervously brushed off her clothes, and walked into an adult CD store. There is a single screening room in the store, Erica bought a few screening coins and walked in. She put in a coin, chose a porn video, and started watching it, looking calm and slightly distracted. After watching for a while, she picked up a tissue that had just been thrown in from the trash can beside her, put it in front of her nose, sniffed the smell of the previous man, and continued to watch.
It's staggered again. She was still sniffing greedily, and the music had turned into singing and piano for the next day's rehearsal. After the rehearsal, Erica is going to be a judge and select a new batch of students. Walter even signed up. Despite Erica's disapproval vote, he was still selected.
The camera quickly cuts to Erica after she returns home. She was in the bathroom, sitting on the bathtub, surreptitiously cutting "a portal to the inside of her body" with a disposable blade. Bleeding, flushing, sanitary pads. She seems to be able to get a little pleasure from self-mutilation, a perverted pleasure. Her mother called her to eat, and she had to stop.
In an adult CD store, she saw her male student. In class that day, she spoke ill of him and asked him to ask his mother to accompany him to class next time. Next class, Walter. There wasn't much real playing, and time was tangled up in quarrels. After class, Erica follows Walter and discovers that he is still playing ice hockey.
At the end of another day, Erica went to the drive-in to kill time. She didn't go to the movies, she went to see the men and women who had sex in the car in the dark. Unfortunately, she found a pair. With the moaning of the woman in the car, Ellie Carton felt the need to urinate, squatted down, and watched the movements of the men and women in the car while urinating. After being discovered by the man, she quickly ran home.
On the day of the rehearsal, the female students were nervous again. Erica scolded her as usual, and then said a few more words of concern. Walter was also present, comforting the nervous pianist from the side, making her smile happily. This kind of comfort caused Erica next to her to suddenly have a strange emotion. She secretly went to the clothing room, broke the glass, and put it into the right pocket of the schoolgirl's coat. As expected, the female student's right hand was cut, dripping with blood. After the incident, Erica ran to the bathroom and locked herself. Walter chased after her and told her his love, which was the scene in the poster. However, Walter is disappointed to discover Erica's perverted sexual control. Erica's stiffness, indifference, and dryness are more exposed sexually. Maybe because of the first time, Walter didn't care, thinking that Erica was just joking, so he looked forward to their next time.
By the next class, both of them were absent-minded. Walter wanted to have sex in the piano room, but Erica did what she said and refused, and only gave him a letter, asking him to read it only when he was alone. Erica had planned that Walter would go home to read that night, but he stubbornly followed her home and forced his way into the house. Obviously, Erica's mother is not welcome. The two entered Erika's own room and slammed the door with the chest of drawers to prevent Erika's mother from raiding. Kiss, caress, that's it. Erica asks to stop, and Walter takes out the letter and begins to read, despite Erica's objections. The writing on the letter was small and dense; Walter discovered from it that Erica liked to be abused, and Erica no longer concealed it, and pulled out a box hidden from under the bed, which contained leather whips, chains and other utensils. Walter's heart was hit again, his desire was frustrated, and he left angrily. The injured Erica was scolded by her mother again. Unable to bear it, she rolled over and climbed on top of her mother, frantically stripped off her mother's panties, and attempted to rape her mother. The two returned to peace again and fell asleep hugging each other.
Unwilling to give up, Erica came to the ice hockey field again and asked Walter's forgiveness. The two kissed wildly, trying to make love again. However, Erica suddenly vomited while biting Walter; the two were ashamed and annoyed, Erica rushed out of the closed and narrow storage room, exposed to the white light of the ice skating rink...
That night, Walter again came to her house. But this time it was midnight knocking on the door. He kind of planned to follow the steps written in the letter, probably because he was infected by Erika's psychology, and he didn't know what her purpose was. According to the letter, he committed suicide under Erica's window, forcibly locked Erica's mother back, and put away all the keys to keep their own space. The hardest part - getting a two-person sex with Erica in an abusive way - also became easier; of course, at the cost of losing its meaning. Walter did it, but he didn't do anything - he was just doing it when he was young, but he couldn't understand the real purpose of Erica's letter: she was crying for help, asking him to help her save the girl who was suffering from depression. Malformed heart. Instead, Erica was bruised and bloodied; instead, Walter got a release.
On the day of the performance, Erica put a knife in her bag and went to the concert hall with her mother. In the hall of the concert hall, Erica greeted many students and parents, and her mother entered. She didn't, she was waiting. Finally, Walter and his family arrived. After a brief chat with her family, she saw Walter, and he saw her. Walter greeted her naturally, as if nothing had happened, and showed a smile of "joy", twisted and creepy. Of course, when the show was about to start, the hall was already empty, and Erica was alone. She groped for the knife she had put in the bag before, her face was empty, and then she became sad, almost crying; when she took out the knife, her expression was suddenly deformed and twisted, she stabbed her left shoulder viciously, and put the knife back. Inside the bag, lightly rubbing the wound with his hand, he walked out of the concert hall quickly and disappeared from our sight...
Someone once wrote that Huppert portrayed Erica's coexistence of wretchedness and nobility, indifference and enthusiasm, loss and satisfaction, turmoil and serenity. In the film, Erica tried to escape the closed environment several times; in the end, Erica walked out of the cage-like corridor outside the concert hall with a knife wound, which shows that her mind has been relieved to some extent. I'm afraid, this psychologically controlled and controlled, repressed and explosive anomaly is the theme of this film as I understand it. Of course, it may not be so appropriate to use this method of plot regeneration to describe «The Piano Teacher», and the understanding of the film's theme is also inconsistent. I think this process of thinking about the soul in terms of the soul is exactly what this intense psychodrama is about.
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